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RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

it . 


NEW AND REVISED EDITION. 



BOSTON: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 













' r _ * 


' • < •: .rs 1847,1850,1855,1856,1860, and 1869, 

b;- rhv- ■ torn ,T .'ON, & Co., and R. W. Emerson, in the 

CW-'k's Oihc - 1 ef :*ie L’istrict of Massachusetts. 



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4>y Transfer 

WAR 30 |917 


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ch, Bigelow, & Co,, 

)GE. 





CONTENTS OF YOL. I. 





MISCELLANIES. 


Nature 


Tags 

3 


The American Scholar. An Oration before the Phi Beta 


Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 


43 


An Address to the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cam¬ 
bridge, July 15, 1838 . 63 

Literary Ethics. An Address to the Literary Societies in 
Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 . 83 

The Method of Nature. An Address to the Society of the 
Adelphi, in Waterville College, Me., August 11, 1841 . 103 

Man the Reformer. A Lecture read before the Mechanics’ 
Apprentices’ Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841 123 

Lecture on the Times. Read in the Masonic Temple, Bos¬ 
ton, December 2, 1841.141 

The Conservative. A Lecture read in the Masonic Temple, 
Boston, December 9, 1841.159 

The Transcendentalist. A Lecture read in the Masonic 
Temple, Boston, January, 1842 . 177 

The Young American. A Lecture read to the Mercantile Li¬ 
brary Association, in Boston, February 7, ’’844 . . 195 


ESSAYS. 


History . 
Self-Reliance 


217 

239 






IV 


CONTENTS. 


Compensation . . . . 263 

Spiritual Laws.283 

Love.303 

Friendship.315 

Prudence.331 

Heroism.343 

The Over-Soul.355 

Circles.373 

Intellect . .387 

Art. 401 

The Poet.413 

Experience ..435 

Character.459 

Manners.475 

Gifts.497 

Nature.503 

Politics.519 

Nominalist and Realist.. . 533 

New England Reformers.547 


















MISCELLANIES. 




NATURE. 


-*- 

A subtle chain of countless rings 
The next unto the farthest brings; 
The eye reads omens where it goes, 
And speaks all languages the rose; 
And, striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form. 








INTRODUCTION. 



UR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the 


v ) fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. 
The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; 
we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an 
original relation to the universe 'l Why should not we have a 
poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a 
religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs 1 
Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream 
around and through us, and invite us by the powers they sup¬ 
ply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope 
among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation 
into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe 1 The sun shines 
to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There 
are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our 
own works and laws and worship. 

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unan¬ 
swerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, 
as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has 
awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every 
man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries 
he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as 
truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and 
tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the 
great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us 
inquire, to what end is nature 1 

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. 
We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet 
a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far 
from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate 
each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and 
frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth 
is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will 
be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phe- 



6 


INTRODUCTION. 


nomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but 
inexplicable ; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex. 

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Na¬ 
ture and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is 
separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 
not me, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my 
own body, must be ranked under this name, Nature. In 
enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I 
shall use the word in both senses, — in its common and in its 
philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present 
one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought 
will occur. Nature , in the common sense, refers to essences 
unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is 
applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in 
a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations 
taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, 
patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that 
of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result. 


NATURE. 


A | 


CHAPTER I. 

T O go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from 
his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I 
read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man 
would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that 
come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him 
and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was 
made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heav¬ 
enly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in 
the streets of cities, how great they are ! If the stars should 
appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe 
and adore ; and preserve for many generations the remem¬ 
brance of the city of God which had been shown ! But every 
night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe 
with their admonishing smile. 

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though al¬ 
ways present, .they are inaccessible; but all natural objects 
make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their in¬ 
fluence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither 
does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity 
by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy 
to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, re¬ 
flected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had 
delighted the simplicity of his childhood. 

When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a dis¬ 
tinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the in¬ 
tegrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is 
this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cut¬ 
ter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which 
I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or 
thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning 


8 


NATURE. 


the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the land¬ 
scape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has 
but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. 
This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their 
warranty-deeds give no title. 

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most 
persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very super¬ 
ficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, 
but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover 
of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still 
truly adjusted to each other; w T ho has retained the spirit of 
infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with 
heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the pres¬ 
ence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite 
of real sorrows. Nattire says, •— he is my creature, and mau- 
gre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not 
the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season 
yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corre¬ 
sponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from 
breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting 
that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good 
health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a 
bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded 
sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special 
good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am 
glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off 
his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever 
of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. 
Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity 
reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not 
how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the 
woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that noth¬ 
ing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving 
me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on .the 
bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted 
into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a 
transparent eyeball; I am nothing ; I see all; the currents 
of the Universal Being circulate through me ; I am part or 
particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then 
foreign and accidental : to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — 
master or servant,, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am 
the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wil¬ 
derness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets 


COMMODITY. 


9 


or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the 
distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beauti¬ 
ful as his own nature. 

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is 
the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the 
vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod 
to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the 
storm, is new to me and old. It takes pie by surprise, and 
yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought 
or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was 
thinking justly or doing right. 

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does 
not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It 
is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. 
For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the 
same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as 
for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy to¬ 
day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man 
laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness 
in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt 
by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is 
less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population. 


CHAPTER II. 


COMMODITY. 



HOEVER considers the final cause of the world, will 


discern a multitude of uses that enter as parts into 


that result. They all admit of being thrown into one of the 
following classes : Commodity ; Beauty ; Language; and Dis¬ 


cipline. 


Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those ad¬ 
vantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is 
a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like 
its service to the soul. Yet although low, it is perfect in its 
kind, and is the only nse of nature which all men apprehend. 
The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we 
explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made 
for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him 



10 


COMMODITY. 


through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid 
ornaments, these rich conveniencies, this ocean of air above, 
this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between 1 
this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped 
coat of climates, this fourfold year 1 Beasts, fire, water, stones, 
and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work- 
yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed. 

“ More servants wait on man 
Than he ’ll take notice of.” 

Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but 
is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly 
-work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. The wind 
sows the seed ; the sun evaporates the sea ; the wind blows the 
vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, con¬ 
denses rain on this ; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds 
the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine 
charity nourish man. 

The useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the 
wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. He no longer 
waits for favoring gales, but by means of steam, he realizes the 
fable of JEolus’s bag, and carries the two-and-thirty winds in 
the boiler of his boat. To diminish friction, he paves the road 
with iron bars, and, mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, 
animals, and merchandise behind him, he darts through the 
country from town to town, like an eagle or a swallow through 
the air. By the aggregate of these aids, how is the face of the 
world changed, from the era of Noah to that of Napoleoji! 
The private poor man hath cities, ships, canals, bridges, built 
for him. He goes to the post-office, and the human race run 
on his errands ; to the book-shop, and the human race read 
and write of all that happens, for him ; to the court-house, and 
nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, 
and the human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the 
snow, and cut a path for him. 

But there is no need of specifying particulars in this class of 
uses. The catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, 
that I shall leave them to the reader’s reflection, with the gen¬ 
eral remark, that this mercenary benefit is one which has respect 
to a further good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but 
that he may work. 



BEAUTY. 


11 


CHAPTER III. 

BEAUTY. 

A NOBLER want of man is served by nature, namely, the 
love of Beauty. 

The ancient Greeks called the world Koa-fxos, beauty. Such 
is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of 
the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the moun¬ 
tain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for them¬ 
selves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and 
grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The 
eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its struc¬ 
ture and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which 
integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, 
into a well-colored and shaded globe, so that where the par¬ 
ticular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which 
they compose is round and symmetrical. And as the eye is 
the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is 
no object so foul that intense light will not' make beautiful. 
And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infini¬ 
tude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. 
Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this gen¬ 
eral grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms 
are agreeable to the eye, as is proved b}^ our endless imitations 
of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the 
w T heat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the 
lion’s claw r , the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, 
buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm. 

For better consideration, we may distribute the aspects of 
Beauty in a threefold manner. 

1. First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. 
The influence of the forms and actions in nature is so needful 
to man, that, in its lowest functions, it seems to lie on the 
confines of commodity and beauty. To the body and mind 
which have been cramped by noxious w T ork or company, na¬ 
ture is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, 
the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and 
sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their 
eternal calm, he finds himself. The health of the eye seems 


12 


BEAUTY. 


to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can 
see far enough. 

But in other hours, Nature satisfies by its loveliness, and 
without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I see the spectacle 
of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from day¬ 
break to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. 
The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of 
crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into 
that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations : 
the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and 
conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify us 
with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, 
and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn 
is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and un¬ 
imaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England 
of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my 
Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams. 

Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the 
afternoon, was the charm, last evening, of a January sunset. 
The western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into 
pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness ; and 
the air had so much life and sweetness, that it w r as a pain 
to come within doors. What was it that nature would say? 
Was there no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind 
the mill, and which Homer or Shakespeare could not re-form 
for me in words ? The leafless trees become spires of flame in 
the sunset, with the blue east for their background, and the 
stars of the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem 
and stubble rimed with frost, contribute something to the 
mute music. 

The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country land¬ 
scape is pleasant only half the year. I please myself with the 
graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much 
touched by it as by the genial- influences of summer. To the 
attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, 
and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which 
was never seen before, and which shall never be. seen again. 
The heavens change every moment, and reflect their glory or 
gloom on the plains beneath. The state of the crop in the 
surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth from 
week to week. The succession of native plants in the pas¬ 
tures and roadsides, which makes the silent clock by which 
time tells the summer hours, will make even the divisions of 


BEAUTY. 


13 


the day sensible to a keen observer. The tribes of birds and 
insects, like the plants punctual to their time, follow each 
other, and the year has room for all. By water-courses, the 
variety is greater. In July, the blue pontederia or pick¬ 
erel-weed blooms in large beds in the shallow parts of our 
pleasant river, and swarms with yellow butterflies in continual 
motion. Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold. 
Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month 
a new ornament. 

But this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, 
is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the 
rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, 
shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, 
become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go 
out of the house to see the moon, and’t is mere tinsel; it will 
not please as when its light shines upon your necessary jour¬ 
ney. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of 
October, who ever could clutch it 1 Go forth to find it, and it 
is gone : ’t is only a mirage as you look from the windows of 
diligence. 

2. The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual el¬ 
ement is essential to its perfection. The high and divine 
beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which 
is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the 
mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. 
Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the 
bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the 
universe is the property of every individual in it. Every 
rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It 
is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep 
into a comer, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but 
he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion 
to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world 
into himself. “ All those things for which men plough, build, 
or sail, obey virtue,? said Sallust. “ The winds and waves,” 
said Gibbon, “ are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” 
So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. When a 
noble act is done, — perchance in a scene of great natural 
beauty; when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs con¬ 
sume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and 
look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae; when 
Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps, under the shadow of the 
avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to 


14 


BEAUTY. 


break the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled 
to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed 1 
When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America ; — 
before it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their 
huts of cane ; the sea behind ; and the purple mountains of 
the Indian Archipelago around, can we separate the man from 
the living picture 1 Does not the New World clothe his form 
with her palm-groves and savannahs as fit drapery 1 Ever 
does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelope great actions. 
When Sir Harry Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting 
on a sled to suffer death, as the champion of the English laws, 
one of the multitude cried out to him, “ You never sat on so 
glorious a seat.” Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of 
London, caused the patriot Lord Russell to be drawn in an 
open coach, through the principal streets of the city, on his 
way to the scaffold. “ But,” his biographer says, “ the multi¬ 
tude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side.” 
In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or 
heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, 
the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to em¬ 
brace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Will¬ 
ingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, 
and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of 
her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, 
and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in 
unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the 
visible v 'sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Phocion, associate 
themselves fitly in our memory with the geography and climate 
of Greece. The visible heavens and earth sympathize with 
Jesus. And in common life, whosoever has seen a person of 
powerful character and happy genius will have remarked how 
easily he took all things along with him, — the persons, the 
opinions, and the day, and nature became ancillary to a man. 

3. There is still another aspect under which the beauty of 
the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an object of 
the intellect. Beside the relation of things to virtue, they 
have a relation to thought. The intellect searches out the 
absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and 
without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the ac¬ 
tive powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive 
activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the 
other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, 
but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and work- 


BEAUTY. 


15 


ing in animals ; each prepares and will be followed by the 
other. Therefore does beauty, which, in relation to actions, 
as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes because it is 
unsought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the 
intellect; and then again, in its turn, of the active power. 
Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The 
beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren 
contemplation, but for new creation. 

All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the 
world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is 
Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not 
content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. 
The creation of beauty is Art. 

The production of a work of art throws a light upon the 
mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epito¬ 
me of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in 
miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumer¬ 
able and all different, the result or the expression of them all 
is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike 
and even unique. A leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, 
make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common 
to them all, — that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The 
standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, — 
the totality of nature; which the Italians expressed by defin¬ 
ing beauty “ il piu nell’ uno.” Nothing is quite beautiful 
alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object 
is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. 
The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the archi¬ 
tect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on 
one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of 
beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art, a na¬ 
ture passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does 
nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty 
of her first works. 

The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of 
beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can 
be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its 
largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the uni¬ 
verse. God is the all-fair. Truth and goodness and beauty 
are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature 
is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and internal beau¬ 
ty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must 
stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression 
of the final cause of Nature. 


16 


LANGUAGE. 


CHAPTER IV. 

LANGUAGE. 

L ANGUAGE is a third use which Nature subserves to 
man. Nature is the vehicle of thought, and in a simple, 
double, and threefold degree. 

1. Words are signs of natural facts. 

2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spirit¬ 
ual facts. 

3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. 

1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural 
history is to give us aid in supernatural history : the use of 
the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and 
changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to 
express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is 
found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right 
means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means 
wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the 
raising of the eyebrow. We say the heart to express emotion, 
the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words 
borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spirit¬ 
ual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation 
is made is hidden from us in the remote time when language 
w^as framed ; but the same tendency may be daily observed in 
children. Children and savages use only nouns or names of 
things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous 
mental acts. 

2. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual im¬ 
port — so conspicuous a fact in the history of language — is 
our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are em¬ 
blematic ; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural 
fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in 
nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state 
of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural 
appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cun¬ 
ning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a 
torch. A lamb is innocence ; a snake is subtle spite ; flowers 
express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are 
our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat 


LANGUAGE. 17 

for love. Visible distance behind and before us is respectively 
our image of memory and hope. 

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not re¬ 
minded of the flux of all things'? Throw a stone into the 
stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the 
beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a univer¬ 
sal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a 
firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise 
and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not 
mine or thine, or his, but we are its ; we are its property and 
men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, 
the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is 
the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, 
we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. 
Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in 
all ages and countries embodies it in his language, as the 
Father. 

It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in 
these analogies, but that they are constant, and pervade na¬ 
ture. These are not the dreams of a few poets, here and 
there, but man is an analogist, and studies relations in all ob¬ 
jects. He is placed in the centre of beings, and a ray of rela¬ 
tion passes from every other being to him. And neither can 
man be understood without these objects, nor these objects 
without man. All the facts in natural history taken by them¬ 
selves have no value, but are barren like a single sex. But 
marry it to human history, and it is full of life. Whole 
Floras, all Linnaeus’s and BufFon’s volumes, are dry catalogues 
of facts; but the most trivial of these facts, the habit of a 
plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the 
illustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or, in any way, 
associated to human nature, affects us in the most lively and 
agreeable manner. The seed of a plant, — to what affecting 
analogies in the nature of man is that little fruit made use of, 
in all discourse, up to the voice of Paul, who calls the human 
corpse a seed, — “ It is sown a natural body; it is raised a 
spiritual body.” The motion of the earth round its axis, and 
round the sun, makes the day, and the year. # These are cer¬ 
tain amounts of brute light and heat. But is there no intent 
of an analogy between man’s life and the seasons 1 And do 
the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy 1 
The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as 
the ant’s ; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to extend 


18 


LANGUAGE. 


from it to man, and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a 
little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that 
said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sub¬ 
lime. 

Because of this radical correspondence between visible things 
and human thoughts, savages, who have only what is neces¬ 
sary, converse in figures. As we go back in history, language 
becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all 
poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural sym¬ 
bols. The same symbols are found to make the original ele¬ 
ments of all languages. It has moreover been observed, that 
the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of 
the greatest eloquence and power. And as this is the first 
language, so is it the last. This immediate dependence of 
language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenom¬ 
enon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its 
power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to 
the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, 
which all men relish. 

A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper sym¬ 
bol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his charac¬ 
ter, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communi¬ 
cate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by 
the corruption of language. When simplicity of character 
and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of 
secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, 
and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take place of sim¬ 
plicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of 
the will is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, 
and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; 
a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the 
vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all 
power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hun¬ 
dreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, 
who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that 
they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one 
thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on 
the language created by the primary writers of the country, 
those, namely, wno hold primarily on nature. 

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten w r ords 
again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at 
once a commanding certificate that he who employs it is a man 
in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse 


LANGUAGE. 


19 


rises above the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed 
with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. 
A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual pro¬ 
cesses, will find that a material image, more or less luminous, 
arises in his mind, cotemporaneous with every thought, which 
furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing 
and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery 
is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the 
present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the 
working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has 
already made. 

These facts may suggest the advantage which the country 
life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and cur¬ 
tailed life of cities. We know more from nature than we can 
at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, 
and we forget its presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the 
woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair and ap¬ 
peasing changes, year after year, without design and without 
heed, — shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the roar of 
cities or the broil of politics. Long hereafter, amidst agitation 
and terror in national councils, — in the hour of revolution,—• 
these solid images shall reappear in their morning lustre, as fit 
symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing events 
shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again the 
woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and 
the cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them 
in his infancy. And with these forms, the spells of persuasion, 
the keys of power are put into his hands. 

3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression 
of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey 
such pepper-corn informations ! Did it need such noble races 
of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, 
to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his munici¬ 
pal speech 1 Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the 
affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put 
it to its use, neither are able. We are like travellers using the 
cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that 
it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot 
avoid the question, whether the characters are not significant 
of themselves. Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no sig¬ 
nificance but what we consciously give them, when we employ 
them as emblems of our thoughts 1 The word is emblematic. 
Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is 


20 


LANGUAGE. 


a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature 
answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. “ The 
visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial-plate of 
the invisible.” The axioms of physics translate the laws of 
ethics. Thus, “ the whole is greater than its part”; “reac¬ 
tion is equal to action ”; “ the smallest weight may be made 
to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated 
by time ”; and many the like propositions, which have an 
ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a 
much more extensive and universal sense when applied to hu¬ 
man life, than when confined to technical use. 

In like manner, the memorable words of history, and the 
proverbs of nations, consist usually of a natural fact, selected 
as a picture or parable of a moral truth. Thus; A rolling 
stone gathers no moss; A bird in the hand is worth two in 
the bush ; A cripple in the right way will beat a racer in the 
wrong ; Make hay while the sun shines ; ’T is hard to cany a 
full cup even; Vinegar is the son of wine; The last ounce 
broke the camel’s back; Long-lived trees make roots first; 
and the like. In their primary sense these are trivial facts, 
but we repeat them for the value of their analogical import. 
What is true of proverbs is true of all fables, parables, and 
allegories. 

This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied 
by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to 
be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not ap¬ 
pear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the 
wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and 
deaf; 

“ Can these things be, 

And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, 

Without our special wonder? ” 

for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher 
laws than its own shines through it. It is the standing prob¬ 
lem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every 
fine genius since the world began ; from the era of the Egyp¬ 
tians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of 
Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at 
the roadside, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, 
he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There seems to be 
a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms ; and 
day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, 
pre-exist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what 


DISCIPLINE. 


21 


they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of 
spirit^ A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible 
creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible 
world. ‘‘Material objects,” said a French philosopher, “are 
necessarily kinds of scorice of the substantial thoughts of the 
Creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to their 
first origin; in other words, visible nature must have a spirit¬ 
ual and moral side.” 

This doctrine is abstruse, and though the images of “gar¬ 
ment,” “ scorise,” “ mirror,” &c., may stimulate the fancy, we 
must summon the aid of subtler and more vital expositors to 
make it plain. “ Every scripture is to be interpreted by the 
same spirit which gave it forth,” is the fundamental law of 
criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth 
and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. 
By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the 
permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us 
an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and 
final cause. 

A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now sug¬ 
gested, we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of 
objects; since “ every object rightly seen unlocks a new 
faculty of the soul.” That which was unconscious truth be¬ 
comes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of 
the domain of knowledge, — a new weapon in the magazine 
of power. 


CHAPTER Y. 

DISCIPLINE. 

I N view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a 
new fact, that nature is a discipline. This use of the 
world includes the preceding uses, as parts of itself. 

Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the 
animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day 
by day, whose meaning is unlimited. They educate both the 
Understanding and the Reason. Every property of matter is 
a school for the understanding, — its solidity or resistance, its 
inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisibility. The under¬ 
standing adds, divides, combines, measures, and finds nutri- 



22 


DISCIPLINE. 


ment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. Meat* 
time, Reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of 
thought, by perceiving the analogy that marries Matter and 
Mind. 

1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellec¬ 
tual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant 
exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of 
order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement ; of 
ascent from particular to general ; of combination to one end 
of manifold forces. Proportioned to the importance of the 
organ to be formed, is the extreme care with which its tuition 
is provided, — a care pretermitted in no single case. What 
tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, 
to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of 
annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas ; what rejoicing over us 
of little men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of 
interest, — and all to form the Hand of the mind ; — to in¬ 
struct us that “ good thoughts are no better than good 
dreams, unless they be executed ! ” 

The same good office is performed by Property and its filial 
systems of debt and credit. Debt, grinding debt, whose iron 
face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and 
hate; — debt, which consumes so much time, which so crip¬ 
ples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so 
base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is 
needed most by those who suffer from it most. Moreover, 
property, which has been well compared to snow, — “ if it fall 
level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-morrow,” — is the 
surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face 
of a clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of the under¬ 
standing, it is hiving in the foresight of the spirit, experience 
in profounder laws. 

The whole character and fortune of the individual are af¬ 
fected by the least inequalities in the culture of the under¬ 
standing ; for example, in the perception of differences. 
Therefore is Space, and therefore Time, that man may know 
that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and in¬ 
dividual. A bell and a plough have each their use, and 
neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to 
drink, coal to burn, wool to wear ; but wool cannot be drunk, 
nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wis¬ 
dom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and 
of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in 


DISCIPLINE. 


23 


their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. 
What is not good they call the worst, and what is not hateful, 
they call the best. 

In like manner, what good heed, Nature forms in us ! She 
pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay. 

The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology (those 
first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take), 
teach that Nature’s dice are always loaded ; that in her heaps 
and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results. 

How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after 
another the laws of physics ! What noble emotions dilate the 
mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, and feels 
by knowledge the privilege to Be ! Hjs insight refines him. 
The beauty of nature shines in his own breast. Man is greater 
that he can see this, and the universe less, because Time and 
Space relations vanish as laws are known. 

Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the im¬ 
mense Universe to be explored. “ What we know, is a point 
to what we do not know.” Open any recent journal of science, 
and weigh the problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, 
Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether 
the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted. 

Passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, we 
must not omit to specify two. 

The exercise of the Will or the lesson of power is taught in 
every event. From the child’s successive possession of his 
several senses up to the hour when he saith, “ Thy will be 
done ! ” he is learning the secret, that he can reduce under 
his will, not only particular events, but great classes, nay the 
whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his charac¬ 
ter. Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It 
receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which 
the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the 
raw material which he may mould into what is useful. He is 
never weary of working it up. He forges the subtile and 
delicate air into wise and melodious words, and gives them 
wing as angels of persuasion and command. One after an¬ 
other, his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all 
things, until the world becomes, at last, only a realized will, — 
the double of the man. 

2. Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason 
and reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and in their 
boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual na- 


24 


DISCIPLINE. 


ture. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and mo¬ 
tion, that every globe in the remotest heaven ; every chemical 
change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every 
change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the 
eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; 
every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall 
hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo 
the Ten Commandments. Therefore is nature ever the ally 
of Religion: lends all her pomp and riches to the religious 
sentiment. Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have 
drawn deeply from this ^source. This ethical character so 
penetrates the bone and marrow of nature, as to seem the end 
for which it was made. Whatever private purpose is answered 
by any member or part, this is its public and universal func¬ 
tion, and is never omitted. Nothing in nature is exhausted 
in its first use. When a thing has served an end to the utter¬ 
most, it is wholly new for an ulterior service. In God, every 
end is converted into a new means. Thus the use of com¬ 
modity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to 
the mind an education in the doctrine of Use, namely, that a 
thing is good only so far as it serves; that a conspiring of 
parts and efforts to the production of an end, is essential to 
any being. The first and gross manifestation of this truth is 
our inevitable and hated training in values and wants, in corn 
and meat. 

It has already been illustrated, that every natural process is 
a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the 
centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the 
pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every 
process. All things with which we deal preach to us. What 
is a farm but a mute gospel ? The chaff and the wheat, weeds 
and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, — it is a sacred emblem 
from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the 
snow of winter overtakes in the fields. But the sailor, the 
shepherd, the miner, the merchant, in their several resorts, 
have each an experience precisely parallel, and leading to the 
same conclusion : because all organizations are radically alike. 
Nor can it be doubted that this moral sentiment which thus 
scents the air, grows in the grain, and impregnates the waters 
of the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The 
moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount 
of truth which it illustrates to him. Who can estimate this 1 
Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has 


DISCIPLINE. 


25 


taught the fisherman 1 how much tranquillity has been reflected 
to man from the azure sky, over whose unspotted deeps the 
winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no 
wrinkle or stain 1 how much industry and providence and af¬ 
fection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes ? What 
a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenom¬ 
enon of Health ! 

Herein is especially apprehended the unity of Nature, —- 
the unity in variety, — which meets us everywhere. All the 
endless variety of things make an identical impression. Xeno¬ 
phanes complained in his old age, that, look where he would, 
all things hastened back to unity : he was weary of seeing the 
same entity in the tedious variety of forms. The fable of Pro¬ 
teus has a cordial truth. A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment 
of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection 
of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully ren¬ 
ders the likeness of the world. 

Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is ob¬ 
vious, as when we detect the type of the human hand in the 
flipper of the fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there 
is great superficial unlikeness. Thus architecture is called 
“ frozen music,” by De Stael and Goethe. Vitruvius thought 
an architect should be a musician. “A Gothic church,” said 
Coleridge, “ is a petrified religion.” Michael Angelo main¬ 
tained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is essen¬ 
tial. In Haydn’s oratorios, the notes present to the imagina¬ 
tion not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the 
elephant, but colors also ; as the green grass. The law of 
harmonic sounds reappears in the harmonic colors. The 
granite is differenced in its laws only by the more or less of 
heat, from the river that wears it away. The river, as it flows, 
resembles the air that flows over it; the air resembles the 
light which traverses it with more subtile currents ; the light 
resembles the heat which rides with it through Space. Each 
creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in 
them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one 
and the same. A rule of one art, or a law of one organization, 
holds true throughout nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, 
it is easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of nature, 
and betrays its source in Universal Spirit. For it pervades 
Thought also. Every universal truth which we express in 
words implies or supposes every other truth. Omne verum 
vero consonat. It is like a great circle on a sphere, comprising 

VOL. I. 2 


26 


DISCIPLINE. 


all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and com¬ 
prise it, in like manner. Every such truth is the absolute 
Ens seen from one side. But it has innumerable sides. 

The central Unity is still more conspicuous in actions. 
Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot 
cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, 
and impoverish it. An action is the perfection and publication 
of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be re¬ 
lated to all nature. “ The wise man, in doing one thing, does 
all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the likeness of 
all which is done rightly.” 

Words and actions are not the attributes of brute nature. 
They introduce us to the human form, of which all other or¬ 
ganizations appear to be degradations. When this appears 
among so many that surround it, the spirit prefers it to all 
others. It says : “ From such as this have I drawn joy and 
knowledge; in such as this have I found and beheld myself; 
I will speak to it; it can speak again ; it can yield me thought 
already formed and alive.” In fact, the eye — the mind — is 
always accompanied by these forms, male and female ; and 
these are incomparably the richest informations of the power 
and order that lie at the heart of things. Unfortunately, every 
one of them bears the marks as of some injury; is marred 
and superficially defective. Nevertheless, far different from 
the deaf and dumb nature around them, these all rest like 
fountain-pipes on the unfathomed sea of thought and virtue 
whereto they alone, of all organizations, are the entrances. 

It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their minis¬ 
try to oureducation, but where would it stop 1 We are asso¬ 
ciated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, who, like 
skies and waters, are coextensive wuth our idea; who, answer¬ 
ing each to a certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on 
that side; whom we lack power to put at such focal distance 
from us, that we can mend or even analyze them. We cannot 
choose but love them. When much intercourse with a friend 
has supplied us with a standard of excellence, and has increased 
our respect for the resources of God who thus sends a real per¬ 
son to outgo our ideal; when he has, moreover, become an object 
of thought, and, whilst his character retains all its unconscious 
effect, is converted in the mind into solid and sweet wisdom,— 
it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he is commonly 
withdrawn from our sight in a short time. 


IDEALISM. 


27 


CHAPTER VI. 


IDEALISM. 



HUS is the unspeakable but intelligible and practicable 


meaning of the world conveyed to man, the immortal 


pupil, in every object of sense. To this one end of Discipline, 
all parts of nature conspire. 

A noble, doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether this end 
be not the Final Cause of the Universe; and whether nature 
outwardly exists. It is a sufficient account of that Appearance 
W'e call the World, that God will teach a human mind, and so 
makes it the receiver of a certain number of congruent sensa¬ 
tions, which we call sun and moon, man and woman, house 
and trade. In my utter impotence to test the authenticity 
of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions 
they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what 
difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, 
or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul 1 
The relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining the 
same, what is the difference, whether land and sea interact, 
and worlds revolve and intermingle without number or end, 
•—deep yawning under deep, and galaxy balancing galaxy, 
throughout absolute space, — or, whether, without relations of 
time and space, the same appearances are inscribed in the 
constant faith of man? Whether nature enjoy a substantial 
existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, 
it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what it 
may, it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy of 
my senses. 

The frivolous make themselves merry with the Ideal theory, 
as if its consequences were burlesque; as if it affected the 
stability of nature. It surely does not. God never jests with 
us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting 
any inconsequence in its procession. Any distrust of the per¬ 
manence of laws would paralyze the faculties of man. Their 
permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is 
perfect. The wheels and springs of man are all set to the 
hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like 
a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand. It is a natural 


28 


IDEALISM. 


consequence of this structure, that, so long as the active 
powers predominate over the reflective, we resist with indigna¬ 
tion any hint that nature is more short-lived or mutable than 
spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the toll¬ 
man, are much displeased at the intimation. 

But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of 
natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of nature 
still remains open. It is the uniform effect of culture on the 
human mind, not to shake our faith in the stability of particu¬ 
lar phenomena, as of heat, water, azote; but to lead us to 
regard nature as a phenomenon, not a substance ; to attribute 
necessary existence to spirit; to esteem nature as an accident 
and an effect. 

To the senses and the unrenewed understanding belongs a 
sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. 
In their view, man and nature are indissolubly joined. 
Things are ultimates, and they never look beyond their 
sphere. The presence of Reason mars this faith. The first 
effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the senses, 
which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it, and shows 
us nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this higher 
agency intervened, the animal eye sees, with wonderful accu¬ 
racy, sharp outlines and colored surfaces. When the eye of 
Reason opens, to outline and surface are at once added grace 
and expression. These proceed from imagination and affection, 
and abate somewhat of the angular distinctness of objects. 
If the Reason be stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines 
and surfaces become transparent, and are no longer seen; 
causes and spirits are seen through them. The best moments 
of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers, 
and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its God. 

Let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture. 1. Our 
first institution in the Ideal philosophy is a hint from Nature 
herself. 

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. 
Certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local 
position apprises us of a dualism. We are strangely affected 
by seeing the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, or 
through the tints of an unusual sky. The least change in out* 
point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air. A man 
who seldom rides needs only to get into a coach and traverse 
his own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show. Tho 
men, the women, — talking, running, bartering, fighting, — 


<?• 


IDEALISM. 


29 


the earnest mechanic, the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the 
dogs, are unrealized at once, or at least wholly detached from 
all relation to the observer, and seen as apparent, not substan¬ 
tial beings. What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a 
face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the 
railroad car ! Nay, the most wonted objects (make a very 
slight change in the point of vision) please us most. In a 
camera obscura, the butcher’s cart and the figure of one of our 
own family amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face 
gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside dowm, by looking at the 
landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, 
though you have seen it any time these twenty years ! 

In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the differ¬ 
ence between the observer and the spectacle, between man 
and nature. Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe ; I may 
say, a low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact, probably, 
that man is hereby apprised, that, whilst the world is a spec¬ 
tacle, something in himself is stable. 

2. In a higher manner, the poet communicates the same 
pleasure. By a few strokes hb delineates, as on air, the sun, 
the mountain, the camp, the city, the hero, the maiden, not 
different from what we know them, but only lifted from the 
ground and afloat before the eye. He unfixes the land and 
the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his primary 
thought, and disposes them anew. Possessed himself by a 
heroic passion, he uses matter as symbols of it. The sensual 
man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things 
to his thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted and fast ; 
the other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon. To him, 
the refractory world is ductile and flexible; he invests dust 
and stones with humanity, and makes them the words of the 
Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which 
the Reason makes of the material world. Shakespeare pos¬ 
sesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of 
expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the 
creation like a bawdfle from hand to hand, and uses it to em¬ 
body any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. 
The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest 
sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual 
connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material 
things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve 
the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, 
the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the ihadow of his 


30 


IDEALISM. 


beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the sus¬ 
picion she has awakened is her ornament; t 

The ornament of beauty is Suspect, 

A crow which flies in heaven’s sweetest air. 

His passion is not the fruit of chance ; it swells, as he speaks, 
to a city, or a state. 

No, it was builded far from accident; 

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls 
Under the brow of thralling discontent; 

It fears not policy, that heretic, 

That works on leases of short numbered hours, 

But all alone stands hugely politic. 

In the strength of his constancy, the Pyramids seem to him 
recent and transitory. The freshness of youth and love daz¬ 
zles him with its resemblance to morning. 

Take those lips away 
Which so sweetly were forsworn; 

And those eyes, — the break of day, 

Lights that do mislead the morn. 

The wild beauty of this hyperbole, I may say, in passing, it 
would not be easy to match in literature. 

This transfiguration which all material objects undergo 
through the passion of the poet, — this power which he exerts 
to dwarf the great, to magnify the small, — might be illustrat¬ 
ed by a thousand examples from hi^ Plays. I have before me 
the Tempest, and will cite only these few lines. 

Ariel. The strong based promontory 
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up 
The pine and cedar. 

Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic Alonzo, and his 
companions; 

A solemn air, and the best comforter 
To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains 
Now useless, boiled within thy "skull. 

Again; 

The charm dissolves apace, 

And, as the morning steals upon the night, 

Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle 
Their clearer reason. 

Their understanding 

Begins to swell: and the approaching tide 
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores 
That now lie foul and muddy. 

The perception of real affinities between events (that is to 
say, of ideal affinities, for those only are real) enables the 


IDEALISM. 


31 


poet thus to make free with the most imposing forms and phe¬ 
nomena of the world, and' to assert the predominance of the 
soul. 

3. Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own 
thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the 
one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth, But 
the philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent 
order and relations of things to the empire of thought. “ The 
problem of philosophy,” according to Plato, “ is, for all that 
exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and abso¬ 
lute.” It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phe¬ 
nomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. 
That law, when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. 
The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, 
which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. 
Is not the charm of one of Plato’s or Aristotle’s definitions, 
strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles 1 It is, in both 
cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature ; that 
the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dis¬ 
solved by a thought; that this feeble human being has pene¬ 
trated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and 
recognized itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. 
In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburdens it¬ 
self of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries cen¬ 
turies of observation in a single formula. 

Thus even in physics, the material is degraded before the 
spiritual. The astronomer, the geometer, rely on their irref¬ 
ragable analysis, and disdain the results of observation. The 
sublime remark of Euler on his law of arches, “ This will be 
found contrary to all experience, yet is true,” had already 
transferred nature into the mind, and left matter like an out¬ 
cast corpse. 

4. Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably 
a doubt of the existence of matter. Turgot said, “ He that has 
never doubted the existence of matter may be assured he has 
no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries.” It fastens the atten¬ 
tion upon immortal necessary uncreated natures, that is, upon 
Ideas ; and in their presence, we feel that the outward circum¬ 
stance is a dream and a shade. Whilst we wait in this Olympus 
of god3, we think of nature as an appendix to the soul. We 
ascend into their region, and know that these are the thoughts 
of the Supreme Being. “ These are they who were set up from 
everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When 


32 


IDEALISM. 


he prepared the heavens, they were there ; when he established 
the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the 
deep. Then they were by him, as one brought up with him. 
Of them took he counsel.” 

Their influence is proportionate. As objects of science, they 
are accessible to few men. Yet all men are capable of being 
raised by piety or by passion into their region. And no man 
touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, 
himself divine. Like a new soul, they renew the body. We 
become physically nimble and lightsome ; we tread on air; life 
is no longer irksome, and we think it will never be so. No 
man fears age or misfortune or death, in their serene company, 
for he is transported out of the district of change. Whilst we 
behold unveiled the nature of Justice and Truth, we learn the 
difference between the absolute and the conditional or relative. 
We apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the first time, we 
exist. We become immortal, for we learn that time and space 
are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a 
virtuous will, they have no affinity. 

5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called,— 
the practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life, — 
have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading 
nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and re¬ 
ligion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties 
commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes 
the personality of God ; Ethics does not. They are one to our 
present design. They both put nature under foot. The first 
and last lesson of religion is, “ The things that are seen, are 
temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal.” It puts 
an affront upon nature. It does that for the unschooled, which 
philosophy does for Berkeley and Yiasa. The uniform language 
that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, 
is, “ Contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world; they 
are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of 
religion.” The devotee flouts nature. Some theosophists have 
arrived at a certain hostility and indignation towards matter, 
as the Manichean and Plotinus. They distrusted in themselves 
any looking back to these flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus was 
ashamed of his body. In short, they might all say of matter, 
what Michael Angelo said of external beauty, “ It is the frail 
and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which he has 
called into time.” 

It appears that motion, poetry, physical and intellectual 


IDEALISM. 


33 


science, and religion, all tend to affect our convictions of the 
reality of the external world. But I own there is something 
ungrateful in expanding too curiously the particulars of the 
general proposition, that all culture tends to imbue us with 
idealism. I have no hostility to nature, but a child’s love to 
it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons. 
Let us speak her fair. I do not wish to fling stones at my 
beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle nest. I only wish to in¬ 
dicate the true position of nature in regard to man, wherein to 
establish man, all right education tends ; as the ground which 
to attain is the object of human life, that is, of man’s connec¬ 
tion with nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views of nature, 
and brings the mind to call that apparent, which it uses to call 
real, and that real, which it uses to call visionary. Children, 
it is true, believe in the external world. The belief that it 
appears only, is an afterthought, but with culture, this faith 
will as surely arise on the mind as did the first. 

The advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith is 
this, that it presents the world in precisely that view which is 
most desirable to the mind. It is, in fact, the view which 
Reason, both speculative and practical, that is, philosophy and 
virtue, take. For, seen in the light of thought, the world 
always is phenomenal; and virtue subordinates it to the mind. 
Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle 
of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and 
religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act 
after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, 
which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contempla¬ 
tion of the soul. Therefore the soul holds itself off from a 
too trivial and microscopic study of the universal tablet. It 
respects the end too much, to immerse itself in the means. 
It sees something more important in Christianity than the 
scandals of ecclesiastical history, or the niceties of criticism; 
and, very incurious concerning persons or miracles, and not at 
all disturbed by chasms of historical evidence, it accepts from 
God the phenomenon, as it finds it, as the pure and awful form 
of religion in the world. It is not hot and passionate at the 
appearance of what it calls its own good or bad fortune, at the 
union or opposition of other persons. No man is its enemy. 
It accepts whatsoever befalls, as part of its lesson. It is a 
watcher more than a doer, and it is as a doer, only that it may 
the better watch. 


2 * 


c 


34 


SPIRIT. 


CHAPTER VII. 

SPIRIT. 

I T is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that 
it should contain somewhat progressive. Uses that are 
exhausted or that may be, and facts that end in the statement, 
cannot be all that is true of this brave lodging wherein man is 
harbored, and wherein all his faculties find appropriate and 
endless exercise. And all the uses of nature admit of being 
summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite 
scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and out¬ 
skirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its 
origin. It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. 
It is a perpetual effect. It is a great shadow pointing always 
to the sun behind us. 

The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, 
she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the 
breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the 
lesson of worship. 

Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks 
most, will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, as it 
were, distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to de¬ 
fine and describe himself, both language and thought desert 
us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages^ That essence 
refuses to be recorded in propositions, but when man has 
■worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature 
is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through 
which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives 
to lead back the individual to it. 

When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already pre¬ 
sented do not include the whole circumference of man. We 
must add some related thoughts. 

Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is 
matter 1 Whence is it 1 and Whereto h The first of these 
questions only, the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith : 
matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. Idealism acquaints 
us with the total disparity between the evidence of our own 
being, and the evidence of the world’s being. The one is 
perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is 


SPIRIT. 


35 


a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, 
from which we may presently awake to the glories and certain¬ 
ties of day. Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by 
other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, 
if it only deny the existence of matter, it does not satisfy the 
demands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leaves 
me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander 
■without end. Then the heart resists it, because it balks the 
affections in denying substantive being to men and women. 
Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is some¬ 
thing of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this 
theory makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for 
that consanguinity which we acknowledge to it. 

Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, 
merely as a useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprise 
us of the eternal distinction between the soul and the world. 

But when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come 
to inquire, Whence is matter 1 and Whereto! many truths 
arise to us out of the recesses of consciousness. We learn that 
the highest is present to the soul of man, that the dread uni¬ 
versal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or pow¬ 
er, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all 
things exist, and that by which they "are ; that spirit creates; 
that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one 
and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that 
is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: 
therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not 
build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as 
the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through 
the pores of the old. As a plant upon the earth, so a man 
rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing 
fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. W ho 
can set bounds to the possibilities of man! Once inhale the 
upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of 
justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the 
entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. 
This view, which admonishes me where the sources of wisdom 
and power lie, and points to virtue as to 

“The golden key 

Which opes the palace of eternity,” 

carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, because it 
animates me to create my own world through the purification 
of my soul. 


36 


PROSPECTS. 


The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of 
man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a pro¬ 
jection of God in the unconscious. But it differs from the 
body in one important respect. It is not, like that, now sub¬ 
jected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable by us. 
It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the divine mind. 
It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure. 
As we degenerate,'the contrast between us and our house is 
more evident. We are as much strangers in nature, as we are 
aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. 
The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger 
rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, 
as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the 
‘landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of 
him! Yet this may show us what discord is between man and 
nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape, if la¬ 
borers are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds some¬ 
thing ridiculous in his delight, until he is out of the sight of 
men. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

PROSPECTS. 

T N inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame 
of things, the highest reason is alw T ays the truest. That 
which seems faintly possible, — it is so refined, is often faint 
and dim because it is deepest seated in the mind among the 
eternal verities. Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, 
and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to be¬ 
reave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. 
The savant becomes unpoetic. But the best read naturalist 
who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see 
that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, 
and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction 
or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by 
untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and 
by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more 
excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infalli¬ 
bility ; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable 
affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the se¬ 
cret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments. 



PROSPECTS. 


37 


For, the problems to be solved are precisely those which 
the physiologist and the naturalist omit to state. It is not so 
pertinent to man to know all the individuals of the animal 
kingdom, as it is to know whence and whereto is this tyran¬ 
nizing unity in his constitution, which evermore separates and 
classifies things, endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to one 
form. When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my pur¬ 
pose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, 
than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tran¬ 
quil sense of unity. I cannot greatly honor minuteness in 
details, so long as there is no hint to explain the relation be¬ 
tween things and thoughts; no ray upon the metaphysics of 
conchology, of botany, of the arts, to show the relation of the 
forms of flowers, shells, animals, architecture, to the mind, 
and build science upon ideas. In a cabinet of natural history, 
we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympa¬ 
thy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of 
beast, fish, and insect. The American who has been confined, 
in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after 
foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. 
Peter’s at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imi¬ 
tations also, — faint copies of an invisible archetype. Nor has 
science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks 
that wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the 
world ; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile 
inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds 
something of himself in every great and small thing, in every 
mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astrono¬ 
my, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis 
lay open. A perception of this mystery inspires the muse of 
George Herbert, the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth 
century. The following lines are part of his little poem on 
Man. 

“ Man is all symmetry, 

Full of proportions, one limb to another, 

And to ail the world besides. 

Each part may call the farthest, brother; 

For head with foot hath private amity, 

And both with moons and tides. 

“ Nothing hath got so far 
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey; 

His eyes dismount the highest star; 

He is in little all the sphere. 

Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
Find their acquaintance there. 


38 


PROSPECTS. 


“ For us, the winds do blow, 

The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow; 
Nothing we see, but means our good, 

As our delight, or as our treasure; 

The whole is either our cupboard of food, 

Or cabinet of pleasure. 

“ The stars have us to bed: 

Night draws the curtain ; which the sun withdraws. 
Music and light attend our head. 

All things unto our flesh are kind, 

In their descent and being; to our mind, 

In their ascent and cause. 

“ More servants wait on man 
Than he ’ll take notice of. In every path, 

He treads down that which doth befriend him 
When sickness makes him pale and wan. 

0 mighty love! Man is one world, and hath 
Another to attend him.” 


The perception of this class of truths makes the attraction 
which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in 
attention to the means. In view of this half-sight of science, 
we accept the sentence of Plato, that “ poetry comes nearer 
to vital truth than history.” Every surmise and vaticination 
of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to 
prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which contain glimpses 
of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable sug¬ 
gestion. A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and 
composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered 
regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new 
activity to the torpid spirit. 

I shall therefore conclude this essay with some traditions 
of man and nature, which a certain poet sang to me; and 
which, as they have always been in the world, and perhaps re¬ 
appear to every bard, may be both history and prophecy. 

* The foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit. 
But the element of spirit is eternity. To it, therefore, the 
longest series of events, the oldest chronologies are young and 
recent. In the cycle of the universal man, from whom the 
known individuals proceed, centuries are points, and all history 
is but the epoch of one degradation. 

‘ We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with nature. 
We own and disown our relation to it, by turns. We are, like 
Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass 
like an ox. But who can set limits to the remedial force of 
spirit 3 

‘ A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life 


PROSPECTS. 


39 


shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as 
we awake from dreams. Now, the world would be insane and 
rabid, if these disorganizations should last for hundreds of 
years. It is kept in check by death and infancy. Infancy is 
the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen 
men, and pleads with them to return to paradise. 

i Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and 
dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing cur¬ 
rents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon ; from man, 
the sun ; from woman, the moon. The laws of his mind, the 
periods of his actions externized themselves into day and 
night, into the year and the seasons. But, having made for 
himself this huge shell, his waters retired ; he no longer fills 
the veins and veinlets; he is shrunk to a drop. He sees, that 
the structure still fits him, but fits him colossally. Say, 
rather, once it fitted him, now it corresponds to him from far 
and on high. He adores timidly his own work. Now is man 
the follower of the sun, and woman the follower of the moon. 
Yet sometimes he starts in his slumber, and wonders at him¬ 
self and his house, and muses strangely at the resemblance 
betwixt him and it. He perceives that if his law is still para¬ 
mount, if still he have elemental power, if his word is sterling 
yet in nature, it is not conscious power, it is not inferior but 
superior to his will. It is Instinct.’ Thus my Orphic poet 
sang. 

At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He 
works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in 
it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom ; and he that works 
most in it, is but a half-man, and v T hilst his arms are strong 
and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a self¬ 
ish savage. His relation to nature, his power over it, is 
through the understanding ; as by manure ; the economic use 
of fire, wind, water, and the mariner’s needle; steam, coal, 
chemical agriculture; the repairs of the human body by the 
dentist and the surgeon. This is such a resumption of power, 
as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, 
instead of vaulting at once into his throne Meantime, in the 
thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a better light, 
— occasional examples of the action of man upon nature with 
his entire force, — with reason as well as understanding. 
Such examples arc; the traditions of miracles in the earliest 
antiquity of all nations ; the history of Jesus Christ; the 
achievements cf a principle, as in religious and political revolu¬ 
tions, and in the abolition cf the Slave-trade; the miracles of 


40 


PROSPECTS. 


enthusiasm, as those reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and 
the Shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now ar¬ 
ranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer; elo¬ 
quence ; self-healing; and the wisdom of children. These are 
examples of Reason’s momentary grasp of the sceptre; the 
exertions of a power which exists not in time or space, but an 
instantaneous in-streaming causing power. The difference be¬ 
tween the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured 
by the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledge of man is an 
evening knowledge, vespertina cognitio , but that of God is a 
morning knowledge, matutina cognitio. 

The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal 
beauty, is solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or 
the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own 
eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of 
things, and so they appear not transparent but opaque. The 
reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in 
heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. He cannot 
be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. 
Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed, neither 
can be perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning 
of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. 
Deep calls unto deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not 
celebrated. There are innocent men who worship God after 
the tradition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has not 
yet extended to the use of all their faculties. ' And there are 
patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject under the 
wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer also a study 
of truth, — a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite ? No 
man ever prayed heartily, without learning something. But 
when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from 
personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at 
the same time, kindle science with the fire of the 'holiest affec¬ 
tions, then will God go forth anew into the creation. 

It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to 
search for objects. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see 
the miraculous in the common. What is a day 'l What is a 
year 1 What is summer 1 What is woman 'l What is a 
child 1 What is sleep 1 To our blindness, these things seem 
unaffecting. We make fables to hide the baldness of the fact 
and conform it, as we say, to the higher law of the mind. 
But when the fact is seen under the light of an idea, the 
gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We behold the real higher 
law. To the wise, therefore, a fact is true noetry, and the 


PROSPECTS. 


41 


most beautiful of fables. These wonders are brought to our 
own door. You also are a man. Man and woman, and their 
social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known to 
you. Learn that none of these things is superficial, but that 
each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties and affections 
of the mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies your in¬ 
tellect, nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by your 
hands. It were a wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, 
point by point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our daily 
history, with the rise and progress of ideas in the mind. 

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It 
shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is 
truth 1 and of the affections, — What is good 1 by yielding 
itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass 
what my poet said : k Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit 
alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of na¬ 
ture, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is 
volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house j and 
beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. 
Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phe¬ 
nomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All 
that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. 
Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his 
house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobbler’s trade; a 
hundred acres of ploughed land ; or a scholar’s garret. Yet 
line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as 
theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own 
world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in 
your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A corre¬ 
spondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the 
spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, 
snakes, pests, mad-houses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are 
temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths 
of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As 
w T hen the summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, 
and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the 
advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry 
with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it 
shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and 
heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The 
kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observa¬ 
tion, — a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God, 
— he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man 
feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.’ 








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THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at 
Cambridge, August 31 , 1837 . 





THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


M r. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: — 

I greet you on the re-commencement of our literary 
year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough 
of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for 
the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient 
Greeks ; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Trouba¬ 
dours ; nor for the advancement of science, like our contempo¬ 
raries in the British and European capitals. Thus far, our 
holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the 
love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters 
any more. As such, it is precious as the sign of an inde¬ 
structible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come, when 
it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the slug¬ 
gard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron 
lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world with some¬ 
thing better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of 
dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other 
lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us are 
rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of 
foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, 
that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that poetry will 
revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation 
Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, 
shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years 1 

In this hope, I accept the topic which not only usage, but 
the nature of our association, seem to prescribe to this day, — 
the American Scholar. Year by year, we come up hither to 
read one more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire what 
light new days and events have thrown on his character, and 
his hopes. 

It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiqui- 




46 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


ty, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the be¬ 
ginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful 
to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the bet¬ 
ter to answer its end. 

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime ; that 
there is One Man,-—present to all particular men only par¬ 
tially, or through one faculty; and that you must tako the 
whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or 
a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and 
scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the 
divided or social state, these functions are parcelled out to in¬ 
dividuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, 
whilst each other performs his. The fable implies, that the 
individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his 
own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortu¬ 
nately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so 
distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided 
and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be 
gathered. The state of society is one in which the members 
have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so 
many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, 
an elbow, but never a man. 

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. 
The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, 
is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his 
ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing 
beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the 
farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to 
his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the 
soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the 
attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine ; the sailor, 
a rope of a ship. 

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated 
intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the 
degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to 
become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other 
men’s thinking. 

In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the theory of his 
office is contained. Him Nature solicits with all her placid, 
all her monitory pictures; him the past instructs ; him the 
future invites. Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do 
not all things exist for the student’s behoof 1 And, finally, is 
not the true scholar the only true master 1 But the old 


t' 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


47 


oracle said : ‘ All things have two handles : beware of the 
wrong one.’ In life, too often, the scholar errs with mankind 
and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and 
consider him in reference to the main influences he receives. 

I. The first in time and the first in importance of the 
influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the 
sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds 
blow ; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, con¬ 
versing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men 
■whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value 
in his mind. What is nature to him % There is never a 
beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity 
of this web of God, but always circular power returning into 
itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, 
whose ending, he never can find, — so entire, so boundless. 
Far, too, as her splendors shine, system on system shooting 
like rays, upward, downward, without centre, without circum¬ 
ference, — in the mass and in the particle, nature hastens to 
render account of herself to the mind. Classification begins. 
To the young mind, everything is individual, stands by itself. 
By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them 
one nature; then three, then three thousand ; and so tyran¬ 
nized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things 
together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running 
under ground, "whereby contrary and remote things cohere, 
and flower out from one stem. It presently learns, that, since 
the dawn of history, there has been a constant accumulation 
and classifying of facts. But what is classification but the per¬ 
ceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, 
but have a law which is also a law of the human mind ? The 
astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the 
human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The 
chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout 
matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, 
identity in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits 
down before each refractory fact; one after another, reduces 
all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and 
their law, and goes on forever to animate the last fibre of 
organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight. 

Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of 
day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is 
leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every 


48 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


vein. And what is that Root 1 Is not that the soul of his 
soul 1 — A thought too bold, — a dream too wild. Yet 
when this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more 
earthly natures, — when he has learned to worship the soul, 
and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the 
first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an 
ever-expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator. He shall 
see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it 
part for part. One is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the 
beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own 
mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attain¬ 
ments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of 
his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the 
ancient precept, “ Know thyself,” and the modern precept, 
“ Study nature,” become at last one maxim. 

II. The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar 
is, the mind of the Past, — in whatever form, whether of liter¬ 
ature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books 
are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we 
shall get at the truth, — learn the. amount of this influence 
more conveniently, — by considering their value alone. 

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age 
received into him the world around; brooded thereon ; gave it 
the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. 
It came into him, life ; it went out from him, truth. It 
came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, im¬ 
mortal thoughts. It came to him, business ; it went from him, 
poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can 
stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now in¬ 
spires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from 
which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing. 

Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, 
of transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the complete¬ 
ness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness 
of the product be. But none is quite perfect. As no air- 
pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither 
can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the 
perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that 
shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to 
cotemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, 
must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the 
next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


49 


Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which 
attaches to the act of creation, — the act of thought, — is 
transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a 
divine man : henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer 
was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book 
is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his 
statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious : the guide is a 
tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, ' 
slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so 
opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and 
makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on 
it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Think- 
ing; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out 
from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. 
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty 
to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, 
have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only 
young men in libraries, w T hen they wrote these books. 

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. 
Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as 
related to nature and the human constitution, but as mak¬ 
ing a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, 
the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of 
all degrees. 

Books are the best of things, wffll used; abused, among the 
worst. What is the right use I What is the one end, which 
all means go to effect ? They are for nothing but to inspire. 

I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attrac¬ 
tion clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead 
of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the ac¬ 
tive soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man 
contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, 
and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth ; and 
utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the 
privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of 
every man. In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the 
college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with 
some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, — let 
us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and 
not forward. But genius looks forward ; the eyes of man are 
set in his forehead, not in his hindhead; man hopes; genius 
creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the 
pure efflux of the Deity is not his: cinders and smoke there 
VOL I. 3 — I) 


50 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners, 
there are creative actions and creative words ; manners, actions, 
words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but spring¬ 
ing spontaneous from the mind’s own sense of good and fair. 

On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it re¬ 
ceive from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents 
of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery, 
and a fatal disservice is done. Genius is always sufficiently 
the enemy of genius by over-influence. The literature of every 
nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have 
Shakespearized now for two hundred years. 

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be stern¬ 
ly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his 
instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When 
he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted 
in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the in¬ 
tervals of darkness come, as come they must, — when the sun 
is hid, and the stars withdraw their shining, — we repair to 
the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps 
to the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that we may 
speak. The Arabian proverb says, “A fig-tree, looking on a 
fig-tree, becometh fruitful.” 

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive 
from the best books. They impress us with the conviction, 
that one nature wrote and the same reads. We read the 
verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Mar¬ 
vell, of Dryden, with the most modern joy, — with a pleasure, 
I mean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction of all 
time from their verses. There is some awe mixed with the joy 
of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, 
two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close ta 
my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said. 
But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical doc¬ 
trine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some pre- 
established harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, 
and some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the 
fact observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the 
young grub they shall never see. 

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exag¬ 
geration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, 
that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though 
it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human 
mmd can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


51 


men have existed, who had almost no other information than 
by the printed page. I only would say, that it needs a strong 
head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read 
well. As the proverb says, “ He that would bring home the 
wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies.” 
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. 
When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of 
whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allu¬ 
sion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of 
our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is al¬ 
ways true, that, as the seer’s hour of vision is short and rare 
among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the 
least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato 
or Shakespeare, only that least part, — only the authentic 
utterances of the oracle ; all the rest he rejects, were it never 
so many times Plato’s and Shakespeare’s. 

Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable 
to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn, by 
laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indis¬ 
pensable office, — to teach elements. But they can only high¬ 
ly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create ; when 
they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospi¬ 
table halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their 
youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which 
apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuni¬ 
ary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail 
the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our 
American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst 
they grow richer every year. 

III. There goes in the world a notion, that the scholar 
should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as unfit for any han¬ 
diwork or public labor, as a penknife for an axe. The so- 
called ‘ practical men ’ sneer at speculative men, as if, be¬ 
cause they speculate or see , they could do nothing. I have 
heard it said that the clergy — who are always, more univer¬ 
sally than any other class, the scholars of their day — are ad¬ 
dressed as women ; that the rough, spontaneous conversation 
of men they do not hear, but only a mincing and diluted 
speech. They are often virtually disfranchised; and, indeed, 
there are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true 
of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action is with 
the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is 


52 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. 
Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, 
we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but 
there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The pream¬ 
ble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the 
unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I 
know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are 
loaded with life, and whose not. 

The world — this shadow of the soul, or other me — lies wide 
around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my 
thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly 
into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next 
me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, 
taught by an instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal 
with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear; I dis¬ 
pose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So much 
only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness 
have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my 
being, my dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, 
for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in 
which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his discourse. 
Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in elo¬ 
quence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every oppor¬ 
tunity of action past by, as a loss of power. It is the raw ma¬ 
terial out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products. 
A strange process too, this, by -which experience is converted 
into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin. The 
manufacture goes forward at all hours. 

The actions and events of our childhood and youth are 
now matters of calmest observation. They lie like fair pic¬ 
tures in the air. Not so with our recent actions, — with the 
business which we now have in hand* On this we are quite 
unable to speculate. Our affections as yet circulate through 
it. We no more feel or know it, than we feel the feet, or the 
hand, or the brain of our body. The new deed is yet a part 
of life, — remains for a time immersed in our unconscious 
life. In some contemplative hour, it detaches itself from the 
life like a ripe fruit, to become a thought of the mind. In¬ 
stantly, it is raised, transfigured; the corruptible has put on 
incorruption. Henceforth it is an object of beauty, however 
base its origin and neighborhood. Observe, too, the impossi¬ 
bility of antedating this act. In its grub state, it cannot fly, 
it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly, without oh- 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


53 


servation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and is 
an angel of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in our pri¬ 
vate history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, 
inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the 
empyrean. Cradle and infancy, school and play-ground, the 
fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids 
and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole 
sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and 
party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar 
and sing. 

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit ac¬ 
tions has the richest return of wisdom. I will not shut 
myself out of this globe of action, and transplant an oak into 
a flower-pot, there to hunger and pine; nor trust the reve¬ 
nue of some single faculty, and exhaust one vein of thought, 
much like those Savoyards, who, getting their livelihood by 
carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and smoking Dutchmen, for 
all Europe, went out one day to the mountain to find stock, 
and discovered that they had whittled up the last of their 
pine-trees. Authors we have, in numbers, who have written 
out their vein, and who, moved by a commendable prudence, 
sail for Greece or Palestine, follow the trapper into the prairie, 
or ramble round Algiers, to replenish their merchantable stock. 

If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be cove¬ 
tous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent 
in country labors ; in town, — in the insight into trades and 
manufactures ; in frank intercourse with many men and 
women ; in science ; in art; to the one end of mastering in all 
their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our 
perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much 
he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his 
speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get 
tiles and cope-stones for the masonry of to-day. This is the 
way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the lan¬ 
guage which the field and the work-yard made. 

But the final value of action, like that of books, and better 
than books, is, that it is a resource. That great principle of 
Undulation in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and 
expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety ; in the ebb and 
flow of the sea ; in day and night; in heat and cold ; and as 
yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is 
known to us under the name of Polarity, — these “ fits of easy 
transmission and reflection,” as Newton called them, are the 
law of nature because they are the law of spirit. 


54 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces 
the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when 
the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer ap¬ 
prehended, and books are a weariness, — he has always the 
resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Think¬ 
ing is the function. Living is the functionary. The stream 
retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as 
well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to 
impart his truths 1 He can still fall back on this elemental 
force of living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a par¬ 
tial act. Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let 
the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those ‘ far from 
fame/ who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of his 
constitution in the doings and passages of the day better than 
it can be measured by any public and designed display. Time 
shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour "which the man 
lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his instinct, 
screened from influence. What is lost in seemliness is gained 
in strength. Not out of those, on whom systems of educa¬ 
tion have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to 
destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled 
savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Bersekirs, come at 
last Alfred and Shakespeare. 

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said 
of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There 
is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as 
for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; al¬ 
ways we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, 
that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacri¬ 
fice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of ac¬ 
tion. 

I have now spoken of the education of the scholar by 
nature, by books, and by action. It remains to say somewhat 
of his duties. 

They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be 
comprised in self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, 
to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst ap¬ 
pearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of 
observation. Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed obser¬ 
vatories, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, 
and, the results being splendid and useful, honor is sure. But 
he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebu- 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


55 


lous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought 
of as such, — watching days and months, sometimes, for a few 
facts; correcting still his old records, — must relinquish dis¬ 
play and immediate fame. In the long period of his prepara¬ 
tion, he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in 
popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder 
him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech ; often fore¬ 
go the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept—how 
often ! — poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of 
treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, 
the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, 
and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent 
uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling 
vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the 
state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, 
and especially to educated society. For all this loss and scorn, 
what offset 1 He is to find consolation in exercising the highest 
functions of human nature. He is one, who raises himself 
from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public 
and illustrious thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the 
world’s heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retro¬ 
grades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating 
heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the 
conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, 
in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its com¬ 
mentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive and 
impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her invio¬ 
lable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, 
— this he shall hear and promulgate. 

These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confi¬ 
dence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He 
and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is 
the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of 
a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried 
up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all 
depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that 
the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the 
scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not 
quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient 
and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. 
In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by 
himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, 
patient of reproach ; and bide his own time, — happy enough, 


56 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


if he can satisfy himself alone, that this day he has seen 
something truly. Success treads on every right step. For 
the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what 
he thinks. He then learns, that in going down into the secrets 
of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds. 
He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private 
thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language 
he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be 
translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spon¬ 
taneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded 
that, which men in crowded cities find true for them also. 
The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, 
— his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, — until 
he finds that he is the complement of his hearers; that they 
drink his words because he fulfils for them their own nature ; 
the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, 
to his wonder he finds, this is the most acceptable, most public, 
and universally true. The people delight in it; the better 
part of every man feels, This is my music ; this is myself. 

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should 
the scholar be, —free .and brave. Free even to the definition 
of freedom, “without any hindrance that does not arise out of 
his own constitution.” Brave ; for fear is a thing which a 
scholar by his very function puts belilnd him. Fear always 
springs from ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tran¬ 
quillity, amid dangerous times, arise from the presumption, 
that, like children and women, his is a protected class ; or if 
he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts 
from politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich 
in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning 
rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the 
danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike let him 
turn and face it. Let him look into its eye and search its 
nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of this lion,—- 
which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a 
perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have 
made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth 
defy it, and pass on superior. The world is his, who can see 
through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind cus¬ 
tom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by suffer¬ 
ance, — by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have 
already dealt it its mortal blow. 

Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. It is a mis* 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


57 


chievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the 
'world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic 
and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his 
attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. 
They adapt themselves to it as they may; but in proportion 
as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows 
before him and takes his signet and form. Not he is great 
who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind. 
They are the kings of the world who give the color of their 
present thought to all nature and all art, and persuade men 
by the cheerful serenity of their carrying the matter, that this 
thing which they do, is the apple which the ages have desired 
to pluck, now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the harvest. 
The great man makes the great thing. Wherever Macdonald 
sits, there is the head of the table. Linnaeus makes botany 
the most alluring of studies, and wins it from the farmer and 
the herb-woman ; Davy, chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The 
day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great 
aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose 
mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlan¬ 
tic follow the moon. 

For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fath¬ 
omed, — darker than can be enlightened. I might not carry 
with me the feeling of my audience in stating my own belief. 
But I have already shown the ground of my hope, in advert¬ 
ing to the doctrine that man is one. I believe man has been 
wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the 
light, that can lead him back to his prerogatives. Men are 
become of no account. Men in history, men in the world of 
to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are called ‘ the mass ’ and 
‘ the herd.’ In a century, in a millennium, one or two men ; 
that is to say, — one or two approximations to the right state 
of every man. All the rest behold in the hero or the poet 
their own green and crude being, — ripened; yes, and are 
content to be less, so that may attain to its full stature. What 
a testimony, — full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to the 
demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor 
partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief. The poor and 
the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity, 
for their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority. They 
are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great 
person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common 
nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and 
3 * ' 


58 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


glorified. They sun themselves in the great man’s light, and 
feel it to be their own element. They cast the dignity of 
man from their down-trod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, 
and will perish to add one drop of blood to make that great 
heart beat, those giant sinews combat and conquer. He lives 
for us, and we live in him. 

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or pow r er; 
and power because it is as good as money,—the “spoils,” 
so called, “ of office.” And why not ? for they aspire to the 
highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is high¬ 
est. Wake them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap 
to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. This 
revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of 
the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world for 
splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are 
the materials strown along the ground. The private life of 
one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, — more formi¬ 
dable to its enemy, more sw r eet and serene in its influence to 
its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly 
viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. 
Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only done for me, 
as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The 
books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, 
we have quite exhausted. What is that but saying, that we 
have come up with the point of view which the universal mind 
took through the eyes of one scribe ; we have been that man, 
and have passed on. First, one ; then, another; we drain all 
cisterns, and, waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a 
better and more abundant food. The man has never lived 
that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined 
in a person, who shall set a barrier on any one side to this un¬ 
bounded, unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, 
flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of 
Sicily; and, now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates 
the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which 
beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates 
all men. 

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of 
the Scholar. I ought not to delay longer to add what I have 
to say, of nearer reference to the time and to this country. 

Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas 
Which predominate over successive epochs, and there are data 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


59 


for marking the genius of the Classic, of the Romantic, and 
now of the Reflective or Philosophical age. With the views I 
have intimated of the oneness or the identity of the mind 
through all individuals, I do not much dwell on these dif¬ 
ferences. In fact, I believe each individual passes through all 
three. The boy is a Greek ; the youth, romantic; the adult, 
reflective. I deny not, however, that a revolution in the lead¬ 
ing idea may be distinctly enough traced. 

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. Must that 
needs be evil] We, it seems, are critical; we are embarrassed 
with second thoughts; we cannot enjoy anything for hanker¬ 
ing to know whereof the pleasure consists ; we are lined with 
eyes ; we see with our feet; the time is infected with Hamlet’s 
unhappiness, — 

“ Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” 

Is it so bad then ] Sight is the last thing to be pitied. 
Would we be blind] Do we fear lest we should outsee nature 
and God, and drink truth dry ] I look upon the discontent 
of the literary class, as a mere announcement of the fact, that 
they find themselves not in the state of mind of their fathers, 
and regret the coming state as untried; as a boy dreads the 
water before he has learned that he can swim. If there is 
any period one would desire to be born in, — is it not the age 
of Revolution ; when the old and the new stand side by side, 
and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men 
are searched by fear and by hope ; when the historic glories 
of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the 
new era ] This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we 
but know what to do with it. 

I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming 
days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through 
philosophy and science, through church and state. 

One of these signs is the fact, that the same movement 
which effected the elevation of what was called the lowest 
class in the state assumed in literature a very marked and as 
benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime and beautiful; the 
near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized. That, 
which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who 
were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys 
into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all 
foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of the 
child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household 


60 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a 
sign — is it not 1 —-of new vigor, when the extremities are 
made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands 
and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the roman- 
tic ; what is doing in Italy or Arabia ; what is Greek art, of 
Provengal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and 
sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into 
to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. 
What would we really know the meaning of 1 ? The meal in 
the firkin ; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the 
news of the boat; the glance of the eye ; the form and the gait 
of the body; — show me the ultimate reason of these matters ; 
show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause 
lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremi¬ 
ties of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the 
polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the 
shop, the plough, and the ledger, referred to the like cause 
by which light undulates and poets sing; and the world lies 
no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and 
order; there is no trifle ; there is no puzzle ; but one design 
unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest 
trench. 

This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cow- 
per, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. 
This idea they have differently followed and with various suc¬ 
cess. In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope, of 
Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing is 
blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not 
less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near 
explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related 
to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is 
fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most 
modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the 
genius of the ancients. 

There is one man of genius, who has done much for this 
philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been 
rightly estimated; — I mean Emanuel Swedenborg. The 
most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a 
mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical 
Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. Such an at¬ 
tempt, of course, must have difficulty, which no genius could 
surmount. But he saw and showed the connection between 
nature and the affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


61 


or spiritual character of the visible, audible, tangible world. 
Especially did his shade-loving muse hover over and interpret 
the lower parts of nature ; he showed the mysterious bond that 
allies moral evil to the foul material forms, and has given in 
epical parables a theory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean and 
fearful things. 

Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous 
political movement, is, the new importance given to the single 
person. Everything that tends to insulate the individual — 
to surround him with barriers of natural respect, -so that each 
man shall feel the world as his, and man shall treat with man 
as a sovereign state with a sovereign state — tends to true union 
as well as greatness. “ I learned,” said the melancholy Pesta- 
lozzi, “ that no man in God’s wide earth is either willing or able 
to help any other man.” Help must come from the bosom 
alone. The scholar is that man who must take up into himself 
all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all 
the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowl¬ 
edges. If there be one lesson more than another, which should 
pierce his ear, it is : The world is nothing, the man is all; in 
yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not j r et how 
a globule of sap asoends; in yourself slumbers the whole of 
Keason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. Mr. 
President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched 
might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all 
preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too 
long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the Amer¬ 
ican freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. 
Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and 
fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already 
the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to 
aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any 
but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the 
fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the 
mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the 
earth below not in unison with these, — but are hindered from 
action by the disgust which the principles on which business is 
managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, — some 
of them suicides. What is the remedy 1 They did not yet 
see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to 
the barriers for the career, do not yet see, that if the single 
man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, 
the huge world will come round to him. Patience,—- patience j 


62 


THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 


— with the shades of all the good and great for company; and 
for solace, the perspective of your own infinite life ; and for 
work, the study and the communication of principles, the mak¬ 
ing those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is 
it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit; — 
not to be reckoned one character; — not to yield that peculiar 
fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned 
in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the 
section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geo¬ 
graphically, as the north, or the south 1 Not so, brothers and 
friends, — please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on 
our own feet; we will work with our own hands ; we will speak 
our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a 
name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The 
dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence 
and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will for the 
first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the 
Divine Soul which also inspires all men. 


AN ADDRESS 


Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, 
Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15 , 1838 . 



ADDRESS. 


\ 

I N this refulgent summer it has been a luxury to draw the 
breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the 
meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. 
The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, 
the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom 
to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transpar¬ 
ent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man 
under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. 
The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares 
his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature 
was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine 
have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken 
silence with which the old bounty goes forward has not yielded 
yet one word of explanation. One is constrained to respect 
the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. 
How wide ; how rich ; what invitation from every property it 
gives to every faculty of man ! In its fruitful soils \ in its 
navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone; in its 
forests of all woods; in its animals; in its chemical ingredi¬ 
ents ; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and 
life, it is well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue 
and enjoy it. The planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the 
astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history 
delights to honor. 

But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which trav¬ 
erse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks 
the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of 
this mind. What am 11 and What is 1 asks the human spirit 
with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. Be¬ 
hold these out-running laws, which our imperfect apprehension 
can see tend this way and that, but not come full circle. Be- 

E 



66 


ADDRESS. 


hold these infinite relations, so like, so unlike ; many, yet one. 

I would study, I would know, I would admire forever. These 
works of thought have been the entertainments of the human 
spirit in all ages. 

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to 
man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. 
Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that 
his being is without bound ; that, to the good, to the perfect, 
he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness. That 
which he venerates is still his own, though he has not realized 
it yet. He ought. He knows the sense of that grand word, 
though his analysis fails entirely to render account of it. 
When in innocency, or when by intellectual perception, he at¬ 
tains to say, — ‘ I love the Right; Truth is beautiful within and 
without, forevermore. Virtue, I am thine : save me : use me : 
thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, that I may 
be not virtuous, but virtue ’; — then is the end of the creation 
answered, and God is well pleased. 

The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the 
presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely 
game of life we play covers, under what seem foolish details, 
principles that astonish. The child amidst his bawbles is learn¬ 
ing the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force ; and in 
the game of human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, and 
God, interact. These laws refuse to be adequately stated. 
They will not be written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. 
They elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly 
in each other’s faces, in each other’s actions, in our own re¬ 
morse. The moral traits which are all globed into every vir¬ 
tuous act and thought, — in speech, we must sever, and de¬ 
scribe or suggest by painful enumeration of many particulars. 
Yet, as this sentiment is the essence of all religion, let me 
guide your eye to the precise objects of the sentiment, by an 
enumeration of some of those classes of facts in which this 
element is conspicuous. 

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the 
perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute them¬ 
selves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to 
circumstance. Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice 
whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good 
deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by 
the action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity, there¬ 
by puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in so far 


ADDRESS. 


67 


is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the 
majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice. If a man 
dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of ac¬ 
quaintance with his own being. A man in the view of abso¬ 
lute goodness, adores, w T ith total humility. Every step so 
downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, 
comes to himself. 

See how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh everywhere, 
righting wrongs, correcting appearances, and bringing up facts 
to a harmony with thoughts. Its operation in life, though 
slow to the senses, is, at last, as sure as in the soul. By it, a 
man is made the Providence to himself, dispensing good to his 
goodness, and evil to his sin. Character is always known. 
Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will 
speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie — for 
example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good 
impression, a favorable appearance — will instantly vitiate the 
effect. But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help 
you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all 
things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the 
grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear 
you witness. See again the perfection of the Law as it ap¬ 
plies itself to the affections, and becomes the law of society. 
As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the 
good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own vo¬ 
lition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell. 

These facts have always suggested to man the sublime 
creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, 
but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is every¬ 
where active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the 
pool; and whatever opposes that will is everywhere balked 
and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise. 
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute : it is 
like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much 
death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So 
much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. For 
all things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently 
named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, 
just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores 
which it washes. All things proceed out of the same spirit, 
and all things conspire with it. Whilst a man seeks good 
ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far 
as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of 


68 


ADDRESS. 


auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he 
becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness 
is absolute death. 

The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a 
sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which 
makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm 
and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer 
of the world. It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rose¬ 
mary. It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent 
song of the stars is it. By it, is the universe made safe and 
habitable, not by science or power. Thought may work cold 
and intransitive in things, and find no end or unity; but the 
dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart gives and is the 
assurance that Law is sovereign over all natures; and the 
worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into 

j°y-. 

This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude 
of man. It makes him illimitable. Through it, the soul first 
knows itself. It corrects the capital mistake of the infant man, 
who seeks to be great by following the great, and hopes to de¬ 
rive advantages from another , — by showing the fountain of 
all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, 
is an inlet into the deeps of Reason. When he says, “ I 
ought ”; when love warms him; when he chooses, warned 
from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies 
wander through his soul from Supreme Wisdom. Then he 
can worship, and be enlarged by his worship ; for he can never 
go behind this sentiment. In the sublimest flights of the soul, 
rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. 

This sentiment lies at the foundation of society, and suc¬ 
cessively creates all forms of worship. The principle of ven¬ 
eration never dies out. Man fallen into superstition, into 
sensuality, is never quite without the visions of the moral 
sentiment. In like manner, all the expressions of this senti¬ 
ment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity. 
The expressions of this sentiment affect us more than all other 
compositions. The sentences of the oldest time, which ejacu¬ 
late this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. This thought 
dwelled always deepest in the minds of men in the devout and 
contemplative East; not alone in Palestine, where it reached 
its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India, 
in China. Europe has always owed to Oriental genius its di¬ 
vine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men 


ADDRESS. 


69 


found agreeable and true. And the unique impression of 
Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as 
ploughed'into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle 
virtue of this infusion. 

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night 
and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease 
never, it is guarded by one stern condition : this, namely; it 
is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly 
speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can re¬ 
ceive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true 
in me, or w T holly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be 
he who he may, I can accept nothing. On the contrary, the 
absence of this primary faith is the presence of degradation. 
As is the flood so is the ebb. Let this faith depart, and the 
very words it spake, and the things it made, become false and 
hurtful. Then falls the church, the state, art, letters, life. 
The doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness 
infects and dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all; now 
he is an appendage, a nuisance. And because the indwelling 
Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it 
suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to 
one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with 
fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine 
of the majority of voices usurps the place of the doctrine of 
the soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry ; the ideal life, the holy 
life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the belief, 
nor in the aspiration of society; but, when suggested, seem 
ridiculous. Life is comic or pitiful, as soon as the high ends 
of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and 
can only attend to what addresses the senses. 

These general views, which, whilst they are general, none 
will contest, find abundant illustration in the history of religion, 
and especially in the history of the Christian Church. In that, 
all of us have had our birth and nurture. The truth contained 
in that, you, my young friends, are now setting forth to teach. 
As the Cultus, or established worship of the civilized world, it 
has great historical interest for us. Of its blessed words, which 
have been the consolation of humanity, you need not that I 
should speak. I shall endeavor to discharge my duty to you, 
on this occasion, by pointing out two errors in its administra¬ 
tion, which daily appear more gross from the point of view we 
have just now taken. 

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He 


70 


ADDRESS. 


saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its se¬ 
vere harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had 
his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the great¬ 
ness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. 
He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes 
forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this 
jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘ I am divine. Through me, God 
acts ; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me ; or, 
see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ But what 
a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, 
in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of 
the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. 
The understanding caught this high chant from the poet’s lips, 
and said, in the next age, ‘ This was Jehovah come down out 
of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.’ The 
idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have 
usurped the place of his truth ; and churches are not built on 
his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a My¬ 
th us, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. 
He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man’s life was a miracle, 
and all that man doth, and he knew that his daily miracle 
shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as 
pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it 
is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the 
falling rain. 

He felt respect for Moses and the prophets ; but no unfit 
tenderness at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour 
and the man that now is ; to the eternal revelation in the 
heart. Thus was he a true man. Having seen that the law 
in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. 
Boldly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was God. 
Thus is he, as I think, the only soul in history who has ap¬ 
preciated, the worth of a man. 

1. In this point of view we become very sensible of the first 
defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has 
fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate 
religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, 
it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the 
personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with 
noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul 
knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full 
circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those 
of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Chris- 


ADDRESS. 


71 


tianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man 
is made the injurer of man. The manner in which his name 
is surrounded with expressions, which were once sallies of ad¬ 
miration and love, but are now petrified into official titles, 
kills all generous sympathy and liking. All who hear me, feel, 
that the language that describes Christ to Europe and Amer¬ 
ica, is not the style of friendship and enthusiasm to a good 
and noble heart, but is appropriated and formal, — paints a 
demi-god as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris 
or Apollo. Accept the injurious impositions of our early cat¬ 
echetical instruction, and even honesty and self-denial were 
but splendid sins, if they did not wear the Christian name. 
One would rather be 

‘ A pagan, stickled in a creed ontwom,’ 

than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature, 
and finding not names and places, not land and professions, but 
even virtue and truth foreclosed and monopolized. You shall 
not be a man even. You shall not own the world ; you shall 
not dare, and live after the infinite Law that is in you, and in 
company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth re¬ 
flect to you in all lovely forms; but you must subordinate 
your nature to Christ’s nature ; you must accept our inter¬ 
pretations ; and take his portrait as the vulgar draw it. 

That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime 
is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. 
That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows 
God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. There is no 
longer a necessary reason for my being. Already the long 
shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall decease 
forever. 

The divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of my intel¬ 
lect, of my strength. They admonish me, that the gleams 
which flash across my mind, are not mine, but God’s; that 
they had the like, and were not disobedient to the heavenly 
vision. So I love them. Noble provocations go out from 
them, inviting me to resist evil; to subdue the world ; and to 
Be. And thus by his holy thoughts, Jesus serves us, and thus 
only. To aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanation 
of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, 
to be made, by the reception of beautiful sentiments. It is 
true that a great and rich soul, like his, falling among the 
simple, does so preponderate, that, as his did, it names the 


72 


ADDRESS. 


world. The world seems to them to exist for him, and they 
have not yet drunk so deeply of his sense, as to see that only 
by coming again to themselves, or to God in themselves, can 
they grow forevermore. It is a low benefit to give me some¬ 
thing ; it is a high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of my¬ 
self. The time is coming when all men will see, that the gift 
of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding 
sanctity, but a sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine 
and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to 
grow. 

The injustice of the vulgar tone of preaching is not less 
flagrant to Jesus, than to the souls which it profanes. The 
preachers do not see that they make his gospel not glad, and 
shear him of the locks of beauty and the attributes of heaven. 
When I see a majestic Epaminondas, or Washington ; when I 
see among my contemporaries, a true orator, an upright judge, 
a dear friend ; when I vibrate to the melody and fancy of a 
poem; I see beauty that is to be desired. And so lovely, and 
with yet more entire consent of my human being, sounds in 
my ear the severe music of the bards that have sung of the 
true God in all ages. Now do not degrade the life and 
dialogues of Christ out of the circle of this charm, by insulation 
and peculiarity. Let them lie as they befell, alive and warm, 
part of human life, and of the landscape, and of the cheerful 
day. 

2. The second defect of the traditionary and limited way 
of using the mind of Christ is a consequence of the first; this, 
namely; that the Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose 
revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the 
open soul, is not explored as the fountain of the established 
teaching in society. Men have come to speak of the revela¬ 
tion as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were 
dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher ; and the 
goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate 
voice. t 

It is very certain that it is the effect of conversation with 
the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire and need to impart to 
others the same knowledge and love. If utterance is denied, 
the thought lies like a burden on the man. Always the seer 
is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told : somehow he pub¬ 
lishes it with solemn joy : sometimes with pencil on canvas ; 
sometimes with chisel on stone ; sometimes in towers and 
aisles of granite, his soul’s worship is budded ; sometimes in 


ADDRESS. 73 

anthems oi indefinite music; but clearest and most permanent, 
in words. 

The man enamored of this excellency, becomes its priest or 
poet. The office is coeval with the world. But observe the 
condition, the spiritual limitation of the office. The spirit only 
can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any 
liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; 
he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul de¬ 
scends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. Cour¬ 
age, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open 
his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of 
tongues. But the man who aims to speak as books enable, 
as synods use, as the fashion guides, and as interest commands, 
babbles. Let him hush. 

To this holy office you propose to devote yourselves. I wish 
you may feel your call in throbs of desire and ho|)e. The 
office is the first in the world. It is of that reality that it 
cannot suffer the deduction of any falsehood. And it is my 
duty to say to you, that the need was never greater of new 
revelation than now. From the views I have already expressed, 
you will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I believe, with 
numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith 
in society. The soul is not preached. The Church seems to 
totter to its fall, almost all life extihct. On this occasion, any 
complaisance would be criminal, which told you, whose hope 
and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the 
faith of Christ is preached. 

It is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of all thoughtful 
men against the famine of our churches; this moaning of the 
heart because it is bereaved of the consolation, the hope, the 
grandeur, that come alone out of the culture of the moral 
nature ; should be heard through the sleep of indolence, and 
over the din of routine. This great and perpetual office of 
the preacher is not discharged. Preaching is the expression 
of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. In 
how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man 
made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and 
heavens are passing into his mind ; that he is drinking forever 
the soul of God 1 Where now sounds the persuasion, that by 
its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own 
origin in heaven ? Where shall I hear words such as in elder 
ages drew men to leave all and follow, — father and mother, 
house and land, wife and child 1 Where shall I hear these 

VOL. I. 4 


74 


ADDRESS. 


august laws of moral being so pronounced, as to fill my ear,' 
and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action and 
passion 1 The test of the true faith, certainly, should be its 
power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature 
control the activity of the hands, — so commanding that we 
find pleasure and honor in obeying. The faith should blend 
with the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying 
cloud, the singing bird, and the breath of flowers. But now 
the priest’s Sabbath has lost the splendor of nature ; it is un¬ 
lovely ; we are glad when it is done; we can make, we do 
make, even sitting in our pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, 
for ourselves. 

Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the 
worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon 
as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend 
us. We are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as 
best we can, a solitude that hears not. T once heard a preacher 
who sorely tempted me to say I would go to church no more. 
Men go, thought I, where they are wont to go, else had no 
soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A snow-storm was 
falling around us. The snow-storm was real; the preacher 
merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking 
at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the 
beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had 
no one word intimating that he had laughed or. wept, was 
married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or cha¬ 
grined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the 
wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely, to 
convert life into truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in 
all his experience had he yet imported into his doctrine. This 
man had ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and 
sold ; he had read books ; he had eaten and drunken ; his 
head aches ; his heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was 
there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that he had 
ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history. 
The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to 
the people his life, — life passed through the fire of thought. 
But of the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, 
what age of the world he fell in ; whether he had a father or 
a child; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper ; whether 
he was a citizen or a countryman ; or any other fact of his 
biography. It seemed strange that the people should come to 
church. It seemed as if their houses were very unentertain- 


ADDRESS. 


ing, that they should prefer this thoughtless clamor. It shows 
that there is a commanding attraction in the moral sentiment, 
that can lend a faint tint of light to dulness and ignorance, 
coming in its name and place. The good hearer is sure he 
has been touched sometimes ; is sure there is somewhat to be 
reached, and some word that can reach it. When he listens 
to these vain words, he comforts himself by their relation to 
his remembrance of better hours, and so they clatter and echo 
unchallenged. 

I am not ignorant that when we preach unworthily, it is 
not always quite in vain. There is a good ear, in some men, 
that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutri¬ 
ment. There is poetic truth concealed in all the common¬ 
places of prayer and of sermons, and though foolishly spoken, 
they may be wisely heard ; for, each is some select expression 
that broke out in a moment of piety from some stricken or 
jubilant soul, and its excellency made it remembered. The 
prayers and even the dogmas of our church are like the zodiac 
of Denderah, and the astronomical monuments of the Hin¬ 
doos, wholly insulated from anything now extant in the life 
and business of the people. They mark the height to which 
the waters once rose. But this docility is a check upon the 
mischief from the good and devout. In a large portion of the 
community, the religious service gives rise to quite other 
thoughts and emotions. We need not chide the negligent 
servant. We are struck with pity, rather, at the sw T ift retri¬ 
bution of his sloth. Alas for the unhappy man that is called 
to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of life. Everything 
that befalls, accuses him. Would he ask contributions for the 
missions, foreign or domestic 1 Instantly his face is suffused 
with shame, to propose to his parish, that they should send 
money a hundred or a thousand miles, to furnish such poor 
fare as they have at home, and would do well to go the hun¬ 
dred or the thousand miles to escape. Would he urge people 
to a godly way of living; and can he ask a fellow-creature 
to come to Sabbath meetings, wdien he and they all know 
what is the poor uttermost they can hope for therein 1 Will 
he invite them privately to the Lord’s Supper 1 ? He dares not. 
If no heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking formality 
is too plain, than that he can face a man of wit and energy, 
and put the invitation without terror. In the street, what 
has he to say to the bold village blasphemer 1 The village 
blasphemer sees fear in the face, form, and gait of the min¬ 
ister. 


76 


ADDEESS. 


Let me not taint the sincerity of this plea by any oversight 
of the claims of good men. I know and honor the purity and 
strict conscience of numbers of the clergy. What life the 
public worship retains, it owes to the scattered company of 
pious men, who minister here and there in the churches, 
and who, sometimes accepting with too great tenderness the 
tenet of the elders, have not accepted from others, but from 
their own heart, the genuine impulses of virtue, and so still 
command our love and awe, to the sanctity of character. 
Moreover, the exceptions are not so much to be found in a few 
eminent preachers, as in the better hours, the truer inspirations 
of all, — nay, in the sincere moments of every man. But 
with whatever exception, it is still true, that tradition charac¬ 
terizes the preaching of this country ; that it comes out of the 
memory, and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual, 
and not at what is necessary and eternal; that thus historical 
Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing 
it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the 
sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power. 
What a cruel injustice it is to that Law, the joy of the whole 
earth, which alone can make thought dear and rich; that Law 
whose fatal sureness the astronomical orbits poorly emulate, 
that it is travestied and depreciated, that it is behooted and 
behowled, and not a trait, not a word of it articulated. The 
pulpit in losing sight of this Law, loses its reasou, and gropes 
after it knows not what. And for want of this culture, the 
soul of the community is sick and faithless. It wants nothing 
so much as a stern, high, stoical, Christian discipline, to make 
it know itself and the divinity that speaks through it. Now 
man is ashamed of himself; he skulks and sneaks through the 
world, to be tolerated, to be pitied, and scarcely in a thousand 
years does any man dare to be wise and good, and so draw 
after him the tears and blessings of his kind. 

Certainly there have been periods when, from the inactivity 
of the intellect on certain truths, a greater faith was possible 
in names and persons. The Puritans in England and America, 
found in the Christ of the Catholic Church, and in the dogmas 
inherited from Rome, scope for their austere piety, and their 
longings for civil freedom. But their creed is passing away, 
and none arises in its room. I think no man can go with his 
thoughts about him, into one of our churches, without feeling, 
that what hold the public worship had on men is gone, or 
going. It has lost its grasp on the affection of the good, and 


ADDRESS. 


'11 


the fear of the baa. In the country, neighborhoods, half 
parishes are signing off ’ — to use the local term. It is already 
beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from 
the religious meetings. I have heard a devout person, who 
prized the Sabbath, say in bitterness of heart, “ On Sun¬ 
days, it seems wicked to go to church.” And the motive 
that holds the best there, is now only a hope and a waiting. 
What was once a mere circumstance, that the best and the 
worst men in the parish, the poor and the rich, the learned 
and the ignorant, young and old, should meet one day as 
fellows in one house, in sign of an equal right in the soul, — 
has come to be a paramount motive for going thither. 

My friends, in these two errors, I think, I find the causes of 
a decaying church and a wasting unbelief. And what greater 
calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship ? 
Then all things go to decay. Genius leaves the temple, to 
haunt the senate, or the market. Literature becomes frivo¬ 
lous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the 
hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. Society lives 
to trifles, and when men die, we do not mention them. 

And now, my brothers, you will ask, What in these despond¬ 
ing days can be done by us % The remedy is already declared 
in the ground of our complaint of the Church. We have con¬ 
trasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the 
redemption be sought. Wherever a man comes, there comes 
revolution. The old is for slaves. When a man comes, all 
books are legible, all things transparent, all religions are 
forms. He is religious. Man is the wonder-worker. He 
is seen amid miracles. All men bless and curse. He saith 
yea and nay, only. The stationariness of religion; the as¬ 
sumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is 
closed ; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by repre¬ 
senting him as a man \ indicate with sufficient clearness the 
falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a true teacher to 
show us that God is, not was ; that he speaketh, not spake. 
The true Christianity — a faith like Christ’s in the infinitude of 
man — is lost. None believeth in the soul of man, but only in 
some man or person old and departed. Ah me ! no man goeth 
alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding 
the God who seeth in secret; they cannot see in secret; they love 
to be blind in public. They think society wiser than their soul, 
and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the 
whole world. See how nations and races flit by on the sea of time. 


73 


ADDRESS. 


and leave no ripple to tell where they floated or sunk, and one 
good soul shall make the name of Moses, or of Zeno, or of Zo¬ 
roaster, reverend forever. None assayeth the stern ambition 
to be the Self of the nation, and of nature, but each would be 
an easy secondary to some Christian scheme, or sectarian con¬ 
nection, or some eminent man. Once leave your own knowl¬ 
edge of God, your own sentiment, and take secondary knowl¬ 
edge, as St. Paul’s, or George Fox’s, or Swedenborg’s, and you 
get wide from God with every year this secondary form lasts, 
and if, as now, for centuries, — the chasm yawns to that 
breadth, that men can scarcely be convinced there is in them 
anything divine. 

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone ; to refuse the 
good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination 
of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. 
Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emula¬ 
tion Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God 
for these good men, but say, 1 I also am a man.’ Imitation can¬ 
not go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hope¬ 
less mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural 
to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, some¬ 
thing else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beau¬ 
ty, to come short of another man’s. 

Yourself a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost, — cast behind 
you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. 
Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleas¬ 
ure, and money are nothing to you, — are not bandages over 
your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege 
of the immeasurable mind. Not too anxious to visit periodi¬ 
cally all families and each family in your parish connection, — 
when you meet one of these men or women, be to them a di¬ 
vine man; be to them thought and virtue; let their timid 
aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts 
be genially tempted out in your atmosphere; let their doubts 
know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you 
have wondered. By trusting your own heart, you shall gain 
more confidence in other men. For all our penny-wisdom, for 
all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, 
that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the 
few real hours of life ; they love to be heard; they love to be 
caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in 
the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary 
years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls 


ADDRESS. 


79 


wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we 
knew; that gave us leave to he what we inly were. Discharge 
to men the priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall be 
followed with their love as by an angel. 

And, to this end, let us not aim at common degrees of mer¬ 
it. Can we not leave, to such as love it, the virtue that glit¬ 
ters for the commendation of society, and ourselves pierce the 
deep solitudes of absolute ability and worth 1 We easily come 
up to the standard of goodness in society. Society’s praise 
can be cheaply secured, and almost all men are content with 
those easy merits; but the instant effect of conversing with 
God, will be to put them away. There are persons who are 
not actors, not speakers, but influences; persons too great for 
fame, for display ; who disdain eloquence; to whom all we call 
art and artist, seems too nearly allied to show and by-ends, to 
the exaggeration of the finite and selfish, and loss of the uni¬ 
versal. The orators, the poets, the commanders encroach on 
us only as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. 
Slight them by preoccupation of mind, slight them, as you can 
well afford to do, by high and universal aims, and they instant¬ 
ly feel that you have right, and that it is in lower places that 
they must shine. They also feel your right; for they with 
you are open to the influx of the all-knowing Spirit, which an¬ 
nihilates before its broad noon the little shades and gradations 
of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and wisest. 

In such high communion, let us study the grand strokes of 
rectitude ; a bold benevolence, an independence of friends, so 
that not the unjust wishes of those who love us, shall impair 
our freedom, but we shall resist for truth’s sake the freest flow 
of kindness, and appeal to sympathies far in advance ; and — 
what is the highest form in which we know this beautiful 
element — a certain solidity of merit, that has nothing to do 
with opinion, and which is so essentially and manifestly virtue, 
that it is taken for granted, that the right, the brave, the gen¬ 
erous step will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commend¬ 
ing it. You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, 
but you would not praise an angel. The silence that accepts 
merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest 
applause. Such souls, when they appear, are the Imperial 
Guard of Virtue, the perpetual reserve, the dictators of fortune. 
One needs not praise their courage, — they are the heart and 
soul of nature. 0 my friends, there are resources in us on 
which we have not drawn. There are men who rise refreshed 


80 


ADDRESS. 


on hearing a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates 
and paralyzes the majority, — demanding not the faculties of 
prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the 
readiness of sacrifice, — comes graceful and beloved as a bride. 
Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the 
battle began to go against him ; then, when the dead began to 
fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and 
he put on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged 
crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sym¬ 
pathy out of question, that the angel is shown. But these 
are heights that we can scarce remember and look up to, with¬ 
out contrition and shame. Let us thank God that such things 
exist. 

And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, 
nigh quenched fire on the altar. The evils of the church that 
now is are manifest. The question returns, What shall we do 1 
I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with 
new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and 
not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to con¬ 
trive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by 
the French to the goddess of Reason, — to-day, pasteboard 
and filigree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. 
Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through 
the forms already existing. For, if once you are alive, you 
shall find they shall become plastic and new. The remedy to 
their deformity is, first, soul, and second soul, and evermore, 
soul. A whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can 
uplift and vivify. Two inestimable advantages Christianity 
has given us : first, the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole 
world ; whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the 
philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and 
everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual 
being. Let it stand forevermore, a temple, which new love, 
new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splen¬ 
dor to mankind. And secondly, the institution of preaching, 
— the speech of man to men, — essentially the most flexible 
of all organs, of all forms. What hinders that now, every¬ 
where, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wher¬ 
ever the invitation of men or your owm occasions lead you, 
you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, 
and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new-hope 
and new revelation 1 

k I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which rav-. 


ADDRESS. 


81 


ished the souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of those 
Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall 
speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures 
contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to 
millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmen¬ 
tary ; are not shown in their order to the intellect. I look for 
the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, 
that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their round¬ 
ing complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of 
the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with 
purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is 
one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy. 


4* 


v 







LITERARY ETHICS. 


An Oration delivered before the Literary Societies 
Dartmouth College, July 24 , 1838 . 
















ORATION. 


G ENTLEMEN: — 

The invitation to address you this day, with which 
you have honored me, was a call so welcome, that I made 
haste to obey it. A summons to celebrate with scholars a lit¬ 
erary festival, is so alluring to me, as to overcome the doubts 
I might well entertain of my ability to bring you any thought 
worthy of your attention. I have reached the middle age of 
man; yet 1 believe I am not less glad or sanguine at the meet¬ 
ing of scholars, than when, a boy, I first saw the graduates of 
my own College assembled at their anniversary. Neither years 
nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted 
in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the 
excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties 
lead him directly into the holy ground where other men’s as¬ 
pirations only point. His successes are occasions of the purest 
joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the 
lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher ad¬ 
vantages. And because the scholar, by every thought he 
thinks, extends his dominion into the general mind of men, 
he is not one, but many. The few scholars in each country, 
whose genius I know, seem to me not individuals, but societies; 
and when events occur of great import, I count over these rep¬ 
resentatives of opinion, whom they will affect, as if I were 
counting nations. And, even if his results were incommunica¬ 
ble, if they abode in his own spirit, the intellect hath some¬ 
what so sacred in its possessions, that the fact of his existence 
and pursuits would be a happy omen. 

Meantime I know that a very different estimate of the 
scholar’s profession prevails in this country, and the importu¬ 
nity, with which society presses its claim upon young men, tends 
to pervert the views of the youth in respect to the culture of the 
intellect. Hence the historical failure, on which Europe and 





86 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


America,have so freely commented. This country has not 
fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expectation of mankind. 
Men looked, when all feudal straps and bandages were snapped 
asunder, that nature, too long the mother of dwarfs, should 
reimburse itself by a brood of Titans, who should laugh and 
leap in the continent, and run up the mountains of the West 
with the errand of genius and of love. But the mark of Amer¬ 
ican merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in 
eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without grandeur, and 
itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty, 
— which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is 
in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow 
with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders. 

I will not lose myself in the desultory questions, what are 
the limitations, and what the causes of the fact. It suffices 
me to say, in general, that the diffidence of mankind in the 
soul has crept over the American mind; that men here, as 
elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiq¬ 
uity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to 
the unproductive service of thought. 

Yet, in every sane hour, the service of thought appears rea¬ 
sonable, the despotism of the senses insane. The scholar may 
lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but 
when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is a realist, 
and converses with things. For, the scholar is the student of 
the world, and of what worth the world is, and with what em¬ 
phasis it accosts the soul of man, such is the worth, such the 
call of the scholar. 

The want of the times, and the propriety of this anniver¬ 
sary, concur to draw attention to the doctrine of Literary Eth¬ 
ics. What I have to say on that doctrine distributes itself 
under the topics of the resources, the subject, and the disci¬ 
pline of the scholar. 

I. The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his con¬ 
fidence in the attributes of the Intellect. The resources of the 
scholar are coextensive with nature and truth, yet can never 
be his, unless claimed by him with an equal greatness of mind. 
He cannot know them until he has beheld with awe the infini¬ 
tude and impersonality of the intellectual power. When he 
has seen, that it is not his, nor any man’s, but that it is the 
soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to 
him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


87 


all things subordinate and answerable to it. A divine pilgrim 
in nature, all things attend his steps. Over him stream the 
flying constellations; over him streams Time, as they, scarcely 
divided into months and years. He inhales the year as a 
vapor; its fragrant midsummer breath, its sparkling January 
heaven. And so pass into his mind, in bright transfiguration, 
the grand events of history, to take a new order and scale from 
him. He is the world; and the epochs and heroes of chro¬ 
nology are pictorial images, in which his thoughts are told. 
There is no event but sprung somewhere from the soul of 
man; and therefore there is none but the soul of man can in¬ 
terpret. Every presentiment of the mind is executed some¬ 
where in a gigantic fact. What else is Greece, Rome, Eng¬ 
land, France, St. Helena 1 What else are churches, literatures, 
empires 'l The new man must feel that he is new, and has not 
come into the world mortgaged to the opinions and usages of 
Europe, and Asia, and Egypt. The sense of spiritual inde¬ 
pendence is like the lovely varnish of the dew, whereby the 
old, hard, peaked earth, and its old selfsame productions, are 
made new every morning, and shining with the last touch of 
the artist’s hand. A false humility, a complaisance to reign¬ 
ing schools, or to the wisdom of antiquity, must not defraud 
me of supreme possession of this hour. If any person have 
less love of liberty, and less jealousy to guard his integrity, 
shall he therefore dictate to you and me % Say to such doc¬ 
tors, We are thankful to you, as we are to history, to the 
pyramids and the authors; but now our day is come ; we 
have been born out of the eternal silence; and now will we 
live, — live for ourselves, — and not as the pall-bearers of a 
funeral, but as the upholders and creators of our age ; and 
neither Greece nor Rome, nor the three Unities of Aristotle, 
nor the three Kings of Cologne, nor the College of the Sor- 
bonne, nor the Edinburgh Review, is to command any longer. 
Now that we are here, we will put our own interpretation on 
things, and our own things for interpretation. Please himself 
with complaisance who will, — for me, things must take my 
scale, not I theirs. I will say with the warlike king, “ God 
gave me this crown, and the whole world shall not take it 
away.” 

The, whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my 
self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. This is 
the moral of the Plutarchs, the Cudworths, the Tennemanns, 
who give us the story of men or of opinions. Any history of 


88 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


philosophy fortifies my faith, by showing me, that what high 
dogmas I had supposed were the rare and late fruit of a cumu¬ 
lative culture, and only now possible to some recent Kant or 
Fichte, — were the prompt improvisations of the earliest 
inquirers; of Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Xenophanes. In 
view of these students, the soul seems to whisper, ‘ There is a 
better way than this indolent learning of another. Leave me 
alone ; do not teach me out of Leibnitz or Schelling, and I shall 
find it all out myself.’ 

Still more do we owe to biography the fortification of our 
hope. If you would know the power of character, see how 
much you would impoverish the world, if you could take clean 
out of history the lives of Milton, Shakespeare, and Plato, — 
these three, and cause them not to be. See you not, how much 
less the power of man would be 1 I console myself in the poverty 
of my thoughts; in the paucity of great men, in the malignity 
and dulness of the nations, by falling back on these sublime 
recollections, and seeing what the prolific soul could beget on 
actual nature; — seeing that Plato was, and Shakespeare, and 
Milton, — three irrefragable facts. Then I dare ; I also will 
essay to be. The humblest, the most hopeless, in view of these 
radiant facts, may now theorize and hope. In spite of all the 
rueful abortions that squeak and gibber in the street, in spite 
of slumber and guilt, in spite of the army, the bar-room, and 
the jail, have been, these glorious manifestations of the mind; 
and I will thank my great brothers so truly for the admonition 
of their being, as to endeavor also to be just and brave, jto 
aspire and to speak. Plotinus too, and Spinoza, and the im¬ 
mortal bards of philosophy, — that which they have written 
out with patient courage, makes me bold. No more will I dis¬ 
miss, with haste, the visions which flash and sparkle across my 
sky ; but observe them, approach them, domesticate them, 
brood on them, and draw out of the past, genuine life for the 
present hour. 

To feel the full value of these lives, as occasions of hope and 
provocation, you must come to know, that each admirable 
genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls 
is all your own. The impoverishing philosophy of ages has 
laid stress on the distinctions of the individual, and not on the 
universal attributes of man. The youth, intoxicated with .liis 
admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of 
his own soul, which he admires. In solitude, in a remote vil¬ 
lage, the ardent youth loiters and mourns. With inflamed 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


89 


eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has read the story of the 
Emperor Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has brought home 
to the surrounding woods, the faint roar of cannonades in the 
Milanese, and marches in Germany. He is curious concerning 
that man’s day. What filled it % the crowded orders, the stern 
decisions, the foreign despatches, the Castilian etiquette 1 The 
soul answers, — Behold his day here ! In the sighing of these 
woods, in the quiet of these gray fields, in the cool breeze that 
sings out of these northern mountains ; in the workmen, the 
boys, the maidens, you meet, — in the hopes of the morning, 
the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon ; in the dis¬ 
quieting comparisons; in the regrets at want of vigor ; in the 
great idea, and the puny execution; — behold Charles the 
Fifth’s day; another, yet the same; behold Chatham’s, Hamp¬ 
den’s, Bayard’s, Alfred’s, Scipio’s, Pericles’s day, — day of all 
that are born of women. The difference of circumstance is 
merely costume. I am tasting the selfsame life, — its sweet¬ 
ness, its greatness, its pain, which I so admire in other men. 
Do not foolishly ask of the inscrutable, obliterated past, what 
it cannot tell, — the details of that nature, of that day, called 
Byron, or Burke;—but ask it of the enveloping Now ; the 
more quaintly you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonder¬ 
ful details, its spiritual causes, its astounding whole, — so much 
the more you master the biography of this hero, and that, and 
every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, 
and you can put up your history books. 

An intimation of these broad rights is familiar in the sense 
of injury which men feel in the assumption of any man to 
limit their possible progress. We resent all criticism, which 
denies us anything that lies in our line of advance. Say to 
the man of letters, that he cannot paint a Transfiguration, or 
build a steamboat, or be a grand-marshal, —and he will not 
seem to himself depreciated. Bat deny to him any quality of 
literary or metaphysical power, and he is piqued. Concede to 
him genius, which is a sort of Stoical 'plenum annulling the 
comparative, and he is content; but concede him talents never 
so rare, denying him genius, and he is aggrieved. What does 
this mean 1 Why simply, that the soul has assurance, by in¬ 
stincts and presentiments, of all power in the direction of its 
ray, as well as of the special skills it has already acquired. 

In order to a knowledge of the resources of the scholar, we 
must not rest in the use of slender accomplishments, — of 
faculties to do this and that other feat with words; but we 


90 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


must pay our vows to the highest power, and pass, if it be 
possible, by assiduous love and watching, into the visions of 
absolute truth. The growth of the intellect is strictly analo¬ 
gous in all individuals. It is larger reception. Able men, in 
general, have good dispositions, and a respect for justice; 
because an able man is nothing else than a good, free, vascular 
organization, whereinto the universal spirit freely flows; so 
that his fund of justice is not only vast, but infinite. All men, 
in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the 
particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and 
individual over the general truth. The condition of our incar¬ 
nation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to 
prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the ex¬ 
clusion of the law of universal being. The hero is great by 
means of the predominance of the universal nature ; he has 
only to open his mouth, and it speaks; he has only to be 
forced to act, and it acts. All men catch the word, or em¬ 
brace the deed, with the heart, for it is verily theirs as much 
as his; but in them this disease of an excess of organiza¬ 
tion cheats them of equal issues. Nothing is more simple 
than greatness ; indeed, to be simple is to be great. The 
vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity 
of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest privilege 
to the spontaneous sentiment. Out of this must all that is 
alive and genial in thought go. Men grind and grind in the 
mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. 
But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous 
thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all 
flock to their aid. Observe the phenomenon of extempore de¬ 
bate. A man of cultivated mind, but reserved habits, sitting 
silent, admires the miracle of free, impassioned, picturesque 
speech, in the man addressing an assembly ; — a state of being 
and power, how unlike his own! Presently his own emotion 
rises to his lips, and overflows in speech. He must also rise 
and say somewhat. Once embarked, once having overcome 
the novelty of the situation, he finds it just as easy and 
natural to speak, — to speak with thoughts, with pictures, 
with rhythmical balance of sentences, — as it was to sit silent; 
for, it needs not to do, but to suffer ; he only adjusts himself 
to the free spirit which gladly utters itself through him; and 
motion is as easy as rest. 

II. I pass now to consider the task offered to the intellect 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


91 


of this country. The view I have taken of the resources of 
the scholar, presupposes a subject as broad. We do not seem 
to have imagined its riches. We have not heeded the invita¬ 
tion it holds out. To be as good a scholar as Englishmen are; 
to have as much learning as our contemporaries; to have 
written a book that is read; satisfies us. We assume that all 
thought is already long ago adequately set down in books, — 
all imaginations in poems ; and what we say, we only throw in 
as confirmatory of this supposed complete body of literature. 
A very shallow assumption. Say rather, all literature is yet 
to be written. Poetry has scarce chanted its first song. The 
perpetual admonition of nature to us, is, ‘ The world is new, 
untried. Do not believe the past. I give you the universe a 
virgin to-day.’ 

By Latin and English poetry, we were born and bred in an 
oratorio of praises of nature, — flowers, birds, mountains, sun, 
and moon ; — yet the naturalist of this hour finds that he 
knows nothing, by all their poems, of any of these fine things; 
that he has conversed with the mere surface and show of them 
all; and of their essence, or of their history, knows nothing. 
Further inquiry will discover that nobody, — that not these 
chanting poets themselves, knew anything sincere of these 
handsome natures they so commended; that they contented 
themselves with the passing chirp of a bird, that they saw one 
or two mornings, and listlessly looked at sunsets, and repeated 
idly these few glimpses in their song. But go into the forest, 
you shall find all new and undescribed. The screaming of 
the wild geese flying by night; the thin note of the com¬ 
panionable titmouse, in the winter day; the fall of swarms of 
flies, in autumn, from combats high in the air, pattering down 
on the leaves like rain; the angry hiss of the w T ood-birds; the 
pine throwing out its pollen for the benefit of the next cen¬ 
tury ; the turpentine exuding from the tree; — and, indeed, 
any vegetation; any animation; any and all, are alike un¬ 
attempted. The man who stands on the sea-shore, or who 
rambles in the woods, seems to be the first man that ever 
stood on the shore, or entered a grove, his sensations and his 
world are so novel and strange. Whilst I read the poets, I 
think that nothing new can be said about morning and even¬ 
ing. But when I see the daybreak, 1 am not reminded of 
these Homeric, or Shakespearian, or Miltonic, or Chaucerian 
pictures. No ; but I feel perhaps the pain of an alien world; 

world not yet subdued by the thought; or, I am cheered by 


92 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


the moist, warm, glittering, budding, melodious hour, t'htrjt 
takes down the narrow walls of my soul, and extends its life 
and pulsation to the very horizon. That is morning, to cease 
for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body, and to 
become as large as nature. 

The noonday darkness of the American forest, the deep, 
echoing, aboriginal woods, where the living columns of the 
oak and fir tower up from the ruins of the trees of the last 
millennium ; where, from year to year, the eagle and the crow 
see no intruder; the pines, bearded with savage moss, yet 
touched with grace by the violets at their feet j the broad, 
cold lowland, which forms its coat of vapor with the stillness 
of subterranean crystallization ; and where the traveller, amid 
the repulsive plants that are native in the swamp, thinks with 
pleasing terror of the distant town; this beauty, — haggard 
and desert beauty, which the sun and the moon, the snow and 
the rain, repaint and vary, has never been recorded by art, 
yet is not indifferent to any passenger. All men are poets at 
heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness over¬ 
comes them sometimes. What mean these journeys to Ni¬ 
agara ; these pilgrims to the White Hills 1 Men believe in the 
adaptations of utility, always : in the mountains, they may be¬ 
lieve in the adaptations of the eye. Undoubtedly, the changes 
of geology have a relation to the prosperous sprouting of the 
corn and peas in my kitchen garden ; but not less is there a 
relation of beauty between my soul and the dim crags of 
Agiocochook up there in the clouds. Every man, when this is 
told, hearkens with joy, and yet his own conversation with 
nature is still unsung. 

Is it otherwise with civil history ] Is it not the lesson of 
our experience that every man, were life long enough, would 
write history for himself] What else do these volumes of ex¬ 
tracts and manuscript commentaries, that every scholar writes, 
indicate 1 Greek history is one thing to me ; another to you. 
Since the birth of Niebuhr and Wolf, Roman and Greek 
History have been written anew. Since Carlyle wrote French 
History, we see that no history, that we have, is safe, but a 
new classifier shall give it new and more philosophical ar¬ 
rangement. Thucydides, Livy, have only provided materials. 
The moment a man of genius pronounces the name of the 
Pelasgi, of Athens, of the Etrurian, of the Roman people, we 
see their state under a new aspect. As in poetry and history, 
so in the other departments. There are few masters or none. 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


93 


.Religion is yet to be settled on its fast foundations in the 
breast of man ; and politics, and philosophy, and letters, and 
art. As yet we have nothing but tendency and indication. 

This starting, this warping of the best literary works from 
the adamant of nature, is especially observable in philosophy. 
Let it take what tone of pretension it will, to this complexion 
must it come at last. Take, for example, the French Eclecti¬ 
cism, which Cousin esteems so conclusive; there is an optical 
illusion in it. It avows great pretensions. It looks as if they 
had all truth, in taking all the systems, and had nothing to do, 
but to sift and wash and strain, and the gold and diamonds 
would remain in the last colander. But, Truth is such a fly¬ 
away, such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbarrelable a 
commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light. Shut the shut¬ 
ters never so quick, to keep all the light in, it is all in vain; 
it is gone before you can cry, Hold. And so it happens with 
our philosophy. Translate, collate, distil all the systems, it 
steads you nothing; for truth will not be compelled, in any 
mechanical manner. But the first observation you make, in 
the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest trifle, 
may open a new view of nature and of man, that, like a men¬ 
struum, shall dissolve all theories in it; shall take up Greece, 
Rome, Stoicism, Eclecticism, and what not, as mere data and 
food for analysis, and dispose of your world-containing system, 
as a very little unit. A profound*thought, anywhere, classifies 
all things ; a profound thought will lift Olympus. The book 
of philosophy is only a fact, and no more inspiring fact than 
another, and no less; but a wise man will never esteem it 
anything final and transcending. Go and talk with a man of 
genius, and the first word he utters sets all your so-called 
knowledge afloat and at large. Then Plato, Bacon, Kant, and 
the Eclectic Cousin, condescended instantly to be men and 
mere facts. 

I by no means aim, in these remarks, to disparage the merit 
of these or of any existing compositions ; I only say that any 
particular portraiture does not in any manner exclude or fore¬ 
stall a new attempt, but, when considered by the soul, warps 
and shrinks away. The inundation of the spirit sweeps away 
before it all our little architecture of wit and memory, as 
straws and straw-huts before the torrent. Works of the in¬ 
tellect are great only by comparison with each other; Ivanhoe 
and Waverley compared with Castle Radcliffe and the Porter 
novels ; but nothing is great, — not mighty Homer and Mil- 


94 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


ton, — beside the infinite Reason. It carries them away as a 
flood. They are as a sleep. 

Thus is justice done to each generation and individual, — 
wisdom teaching man that he shall not hate, or fear, or mimic 
his ancestors ; that he shall not bewail himself, as if the world 
-was old, and thought was spent, and he was born into the do¬ 
tage of things ; for, by virtue of the Deity, thought renews it¬ 
self inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, 
though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless 
relations. 

III. Having thus spoken of the resources and the subject 
of the scholar, out of the same faith proceeds also the rule of 
his ambition and life. Let him know that the world is his, 
but he must possess it by putting himself into harmony with 
the constitution of things. He must be a solitary, laborious, 
modest, and charitable soul. 

He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must have his 
glees and his glooms alone. His own estimate must be meas¬ 
ure enough, his own praise reward enough for him. And 
why must the student be solitary and silent 1 That he may 
become acquainted with his thoughts. If he pines in a lonely 
place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is not in the 
lonely place; his heart is in the market; he does not see ; he 
does not hear ; he does not think. But go cherish your soul;. 
expel companions ; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, 
will the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and 
field flowers; you will have results, which, when you meet 
your fellow-men, you can communicate, and they will gladly 
receive. Do not go into solitude only that you may presently 
come into public. Such solitude denies itself, is public and 
stale. The public can get public experience, but they wish the 
scholar to replace to them those private, sincere, divine ex¬ 
periences, of which they have been defrauded by dwelling in 
the street. It is the noble, manlike, just thought, which is 
the superiority demanded of you, and not crowds but solitude 
confers this elevation. Not insulation of place, but indepen¬ 
dence of spirit is essential, and it is only as the garden, the 
cottage, the forest, and the rock are a sort of mechanical aids 
to this, that they are of value. Think alone, and all places 
are friendly and sacred. The poets who have lived in cities 
have been hermits still. Inspiration makes solitude anywhere. 
Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden, De Stael, dwell in crowds, 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


95 


it may be, but the instant thought comes, the crowd grows 
dim to their eye ; their eye fixes on the horizon, — on vacant 
space; they forget the bystanders ; they spurn personal rela¬ 
tions ; they deal with abstractions, with verities, with ideas. 
They are alone with the mind. 

Of course, I would not have any superstition about solitude. 
Let the youth study the uses of solitude and of society. Let 
him use both, not serve either. The reason why an ingenious 
soul shuns society, is to the end of finding society. It repu¬ 
diates the false, out of love of the true. You can very soon 
learn all that society can teach you for one while. Its foolish 
routine, an indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides, 
theatres, can teach you no more than a few can. Then accept 
the hint of shame, of spiritual emptiness and waste, which 
true nature gives you, and retire, and hide; lock the door; 
shut the shutters ; then welcome falls the imprisoning rain, —• 
dear hermitage of nature. Re-collect the spirits. Have 
solitary prayer and praise. Digest and correct the past ex¬ 
perience ; and blend it with the new and divine life. 

You will pardon me, Gentlemen, if I say, I think that we 
have need of a more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceti¬ 
cism, I mean, as only the hardihood and devotion of the scholar 
himself can enforce. We live in the sun and on the surface, 
— a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of muse 
and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our shallow and 
frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow 1 Come 
now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on 
our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us 
live in corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, 
with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Silence, seclusion, 
austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our 
being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness the 
sublimities of the moral constitution. How mean to go 
blazing, a gaudy butterfly, in fashionable or political saloons, 
the fool of society, the fool of notoriety, a topic for news¬ 
papers, a piece of the street, and forfeiting the real prerogative 
of the russet coat, the privacy, and the true and 'warm heart 
of the citizen ! 

Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of dis¬ 
play, the seeming that unmakes our being. A mistake of the 
main end to which they labor is incident to literary men, 
who, dealing with the organ of language, — the subtlest, 
strongest, and longest-lived of man’s creations, and only fitly 


96 


Literary ethics. 


used as the weapon of thought and of justice, — learn to 
enjoy the pride of playing with this splendid engine, but rob it 
of its almightiness by failing to work with it. Extricating 
themselves from the tasks of the world, the world revenges 
itself by exposing, at every turn, the folly of these incomplete, 
pedantic, useless, ghostly creatures. The scholar will feel 
that the richest romance, ■— the noblest fiction that was ever 
woven, — the heart and soul of beauty, — lies enclosed in 
human life. Itself of surpassing value, it is also the richest 
material for his creations. How shall he know its secrets of 
tenderness, of terror, of will, and of fate 'i How can he catch 
and keep the strain of upper music that peals from it 'l Its 
laws are concealed under the details of daily action. All 
action is an experiment upon them. He must bear his share 
of the common load. He must work with men in houses, and 
not with their names in books. His needs, appetites, talents, 
affections, accomplishments, are keys that open to him the 
beautiful museum of human life. Why should he read it as an 
Arabian tale, and not know, in his own beating bosom, its 
sweet and smart 1 Out of love and hatred, out of earnings 
and borrowings, and lendings and losses ; out of sickness and 
pain ; out of wooing and worshipping; out of travelling, and 
voting, and watching, and caring; out of disgrace and con¬ 
tempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws. 
Let him not slur his lesson ; let him learn it by heart. Let 
him endeavor, exactly, bravely, and cheerfully, to solve the 
problem of that life which is set before him . And this, by 
punctual action, and not by promises or dreams. Believing, as 
in God, in the presence and favor of the grandest influences, 
let him deserve that favor, and learn how to receive and use it, 
by fidelity, also to the lower observances. 

This lesson is taught, with emphasis in the life of the great 
actor of this age, and affords the explanation of his success. 
Bonaparte represents truly a great recent revolution, which we 
in this country, please God, shall carry to its farthest con¬ 
summation. Not the least instructive passage in modern 
history seems to me a trait of Napoleon, exhibited to the 
English when he became their prisoner. On coming on board 
the Bellerophon, a file of English soldiers drawn up on deck 
gave him a military salute. Napoleon observed that their 
manner of handling their arms differed from the .French exer¬ 
cise, and, putting aside the guns of those nearest him, walked 
up to a soldier, took his gun, and himself went through the 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


97 


motion in the French mode. The English officers and men 
looked on with astonishment, and inquired if such familiarity 
was usual with the Emperor. 

In this instance, as always, that man, with whatever de¬ 
fects or vices, represented performance in lieu of pretension. 
Feudalism and Orientalism had long enough thought it ma¬ 
jestic to do nothing; the modern majesty consists in work. 
He belonged to a class, fast growing in the world, who think, 
that what a man can do is his greatest ornament, and that he 
always consults his dignity by doing it. He was not a 
believer in luck ; he had a faith, like sight, in the application 
of means to ends. Means to ends, is the motto of all his 
behavior. He believed that the great captains of antiquity 
performed their exploits only by correct combinations, and by 
justly comparing the relation between means and conse¬ 
quences ; efforts and obstacles. The vulgar call good fortune 
that which really is produced by the calculations of genius. 
But Napoleon, thus faithful to facts, had also this crown¬ 
ing merit; that, whilst he believed in number and weight, 
and omitted no part of prudence, he believed also in the 
freedom and quite incalculable force of the soul. A man 
of infinite caution, he neglected never the least particular of 
preparation, of patient adaptation; yet nevertheless he had a 
sublime confidence, as in his all, in the sallies of the courage, 
and the faith in his destiny, which, at the right moment, 
repaired all losses, and demolished cavalry, infantry, king, and 
kaisar, as with irresistible thunderbolts. As they say the 
bough of the tree has the character of the leaf, and the whole 
tree of the bough, so, it is curious to remark, Bonaparte’s 
army partook of this double strength of the captain \ for, 
whilst strictly supplied in all its appointments, and everything 
expected from the valor and discipline of every platoon, in 
flank and centre, yet always remained his total trust in the 
prodigious revolutions of fortune, which his reserved Imperial 
Guard were capable of working, if, in all else, the day was 
lost. Here he was sublime. He no longer calculated the 
chance of the cannon-ball. He was faithful to tactics to the 
uttermost, — and when all tactics had come to an end, then, 
he dilated, and availed himself of the mighty saltations of the 
most formidable soldiers in nature. 

Let the scholar appreciate this combination of gifts, which, 
applied to better purpose, make true wisdom. He is a rc- 
vealer of things. Let him first learn the things. Let him 
5 ° 


98 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


not, too eager to grasp some badge of reward, omit the work 
to be done. Let him know, that, though the success of the 
market is in the reward, true success is the doing; that, in 
the private obedience to his mind; in the sedulous inquiry, 
day after day, year after year, to know how the thing stands; 
in the use of all means, and most in the reverence of the hum¬ 
ble commerce and humble needs of life,—to hearken what 
they say, and so, by mutual reaction of thought and life, to 
make thought solid, and life wise; and in a contempt for the 
gabble of to-day’s opinions, the secret of the world is to be 
learned, and the skill truly to unfold it is acquired. Or, rather, 
is it not, that, by this discipline, the usurpation of the senses 
is overcome, and the lower faculties of man are subdued to 
docility ; through which, as an unobstructed channel, the soul 
now easily and gladly flows % 

The good scholar will not refuse to bear the yoke in his 
youth ; to know, if he can, the uttermost secret of toil and 
endurance ; to make his own hands acquainted with the soil 
by which he is fed, and the sweat that goes before comfort and 
luxury. Let him pay his tithe, and serve the world as a true 
and noble man; never forgetting to worship the immortal di¬ 
vinities, who whisper to the poet, and make him the utterer 
of melodies that pierce the ear of eternal time. If he have 
this twofold goodness, — the drill and the inspiration, — then 
he has health ; then he is a whole, and not a fragment; and 
the perfection of his endowment will appear in his composi¬ 
tions. Indeed, this twofold merit characterizes ever the pro¬ 
ductions of great masters. The man of genius should occupy 
the whole space between God or pure mind, and the multitude 
of uneducated men. He must draw from the infinite Reason, 
on one side ; and he must penetrate into the heart and sense 
of the crowd, on the other. From one, he must draw his 
strength ; to the other, he must owe his aim. The one yokes 
him to the real; the other, to the apparent. At one pole, is 
Reason; at the other, Common Sense. If he be defective at 
either extreme of the scale, his philosophy will seem low and 
utilitarian ; or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the 
uses of life. 

The student, as we all along insist, is great only by being 
passive to the superincumbent spirit. Let this faith, then^ 
dictate all his action. Snares and bribes abound to mislead 
him; let him be true nevertheless. His success has its perils 
too. There is somewhat inconvenient and injurious in his po- 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


99 


fiition. They whom his thoughts have entertained or inflamed, 
seek him before yet they have learned the hard conditions of 
thought. They seek him, that he may turn his lamp on the 
dark riddles whose solution they think is inscribed on the 
walls of their being. They find that he is a poor, ignorant 
man, in a white-seamed, rusty coat, like themselves, nowise 
emitting a continuous stream of light, but now and then a jet 
of luminous thought, followed by total darkness; moreover, that 
he cannot make of his infrequent illumination a portable ta¬ 
per to carry whither he would, and explain now this dark rid¬ 
dle, now that. Sorrow ensues. The scholar regrets to damp 
the hope of ingenuous boys; and the youth has lost a star 
out of his new flaming firmament. Hence the temptation to 
the scholar to mystify; to hear the question; to sit upon it; 
to make an answer of words, in lack of the oracle of things. 
Not the less let him be cold and true, and wait in patience, 
knowing that truth can make even silence eloquent and mem¬ 
orable. Truth shall be policy enough for him. Let him open 
his breast to all honest inquiry, and be an artist superior to 
tricks of art. Show frankly as a saint would do, your experi¬ 
ence, methods, tools, and means. Welcome all comers to the 
freest use of the same. And out of this superior frankness 
and charity, you shall learn higher secrets of your nature, 
-which gods will bend and aid you to communicate. 

If, with a high trust, he can thus submit himself, he will find 
that ample returns are poured into his bosom, out of what 
seemed hours of obstruction and loss. Let him not grieve too 
much on account of unfit associates. When he sees how much 
thought he owes to the disagreeable antagonism of various per¬ 
sons who pass and cross him, he can easily think that in a 
society of perfect sympathy, no word, no act, no record, would 
be. He will learn, that it is not much matter what he reads, 
what he does. Be a scholar, and he shall have the scholar’s 
part of everything. As, in the counting-room, the merchant 
cares little whether the cargo be hides or barilla ; the transac¬ 
tion, a letter of credit or a transfer of stocks ; be it what it may, 
his commission comes gently out of it; so you shall get your 
lesson out of the hour, and the object, whether it be a concen¬ 
trated or a wasteful employment, even in reading a dull book, 
or working off a stint of mechanical day labor, which your 
necessities or the necessities of others impose. 

Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these considerations 


100 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


upon the scholar’s place, and hope, because I thought, that, 
standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this 
College, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and pri¬ 
vate, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admonished 
of those primary duties of the intellect, whereof you will sel¬ 
dom hear from the lips of your new companions. You will hear 
every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that 
the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. ‘ What 
is this Truth you seek ? what is this Beauty ? ’ men will ask, 
with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to 
explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you 
shall say, ‘ As others do, so will I : I renounce, I am sorry for 
it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let 
learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient 
season ’; — then dies the man in you ; then once more perish 
the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died al¬ 
ready in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice 
is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself 
fast by the intellect. It is this domineering temper of the 
sensual world, that creates the extreme need of the priests of 
science ; and it is the office and right of the intellect to make 
and not take its estimate. Bend to the persuasion which is 
flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its tongue to 
the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing 
fair is wisdom. Forewarned that the vice of the times and 
the country is an excessive pretension, let us seek the shade, 
and find wisdom in neglect. Be content with a little light, so 
it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor 
flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither 
dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. Why should you 
renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, 
for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn 1 Truth 
also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary 
to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store 
of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men’s 
possessions, in all men’s affections, in art, in nature, and in 
hope. 

You will not fear, that I am enjoining too stern an asceticism. 
Ask not, Of what use is a scholarship that systematically re¬ 
treats % or, Who is the better for the philosopher who conceals 
his accomplishments, and hides his thoughts from the waiting 
w T orld 1 Hides his thoughts ! Hide the sun and moon. Thought 
is all light, and publishes itself to the universe. It will speak, 


LITERARY ETHICS. 


101 


though you were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It will 
flow out of your actions, your manners, and your face. It will 
bring you friendships. It will impledge you to truth by the 
love and expectation of generous minds. 

By virtue of the laws of that Nature, which is one and per¬ 
fect, it shall yield every sincere good that is in the soul, to the 
scholar beloved of earth and heaven. 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in 
Waterville College, Maine, August 11 , 1841 , 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


C ~' ENTLEMEN : — 

JT Let us exchange congratulations on the enjoyments 
and the promises of this literary anniversary. The land we 
live in has no interest so dear, if it knew its want, as the fit 
consecration of days of reason and thought. Where there is 
no vision, the people perish. The scholars are the priests of 
that thought which establishes the foundations of the earth. 
No matter what is their special work or profession, they stand 
for the spiritual interest of the world, and it is a common 
calamity if they neglect their post in a country where the ma¬ 
terial interest is so predominant as it is in America. We hear 
something too much of the results of machinery, commerce, 
and the useful arts. We are a puny and a fickle folk. A va¬ 
rice, hesitation, and following, are our diseases. The rapid 
wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or 
by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, en¬ 
chants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of 
thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold¬ 
mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the 
house, and the very body and feature of man. 

I do not wish to look with sour aspect at the industri¬ 
ous manufacturing village, or the mart of commerce. I love 
the music of the water-wheel; I value the railway; I feel 
the pride which the sight of a ship inspires; I look on trade 
and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me 
discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each of 
these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short 
series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all 
the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times. 
And I will not be deceived into admiring the routine of handi¬ 
crafts and mechanics, how splendid soever the result, any more 
than I admire the routine of the scholars or clerical class. 
5 * 



106 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


That splendid results ensue from the labors of stupid men, is 
the fruit of higher laws than their will, and the routine is not 
to be praised for it. I w r ould not have the laborer sacrificed to 
the result, — I would not have the laborer sacrificed to my 
convenience and pride, nor to that of a great class of such as 
me. Let there be worse cotton and better men. The weaver 
should not be bereaved of his superiority to his work, and 
his knowledge that the product or the skill is of no value, ex¬ 
cept so far as it embodies his spiritual prerogatives. If I see 
nothing to admire in the unit, shall I admire a million units I 
Men stand in awe of the city, but do not honor any individual 
citizen ; and are continually yielding to this dazzling result of 
numbers, that which they would never yield to the solitary 
example of any one. 

Whilst the multitude of men degrade each other, and give 
currency to desponding doctrines, the scholar must be a 
bringer of hope, and must reinforce man against himself. I 
sometimes believe that our literary anniversaries will presently 
assume a greater importance, as the eyes of men open to their 
capabilities. Here, a new set of distinctions, a new order of 
ideas, prevail. Here, we set a bound to the respectability of 
wealth, and a bound to the pretensions of the law and the church. 
The bigot must cease to be a bigot to-day. Into our charmed 
circle, power cannot enter ; and the sturdiest defender of exist¬ 
ing institutions feels the terrific inflammability of this air 
which condenses heat in every comer that may restore to the 
elements the fabrics of ages. Nothing solid is secure ; every¬ 
thing tilts and rocks. Even the scholar is not safe ; he too is 
searched and revised. Is his learning dead 1 Is he living in 
his memory ? The power of mind is not mortification, but life. 
But come forth, thou curious child ! hither, thou loving, all- 
hoping poet! hither, thou tender, doubting heart, who’ has 
not yet found any place in the world’s market fit for thee ; 
any wares which thou couldst buy or sell, — so large is thy 
love and ambition, — thine and not theirs is the hour. Smooth 
thy brow, and hope and love on, for the kind heaven justifies 
thee, and the whole world feels that thou art in the right. 

We ought to celebrate this hour by expressions of manly 
joy. Not thanks, not prayer seem quite the highest or tru¬ 
est name for our communication with the infinite, — but glad 
and conspiring reception, — reception that becomes giving in 
its turn, as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in 
infancy. I cannot — nor can any man — speak precisely of 


THE METHOD OF NATURE.' 


107 


things so sublime, but it seems to me, the wit of man, his 
strength, his grace, his tendency, his art, is the grace and the 
presence of God. It is beyond explanation. When all is said 
and done, the rapt saint is found the only logician. Not ex¬ 
hortation, not argument becomes our lips, but pecans of joy 
and praise. But not of adulation : we are too nearly related 
in the deep of the mind to that we honor. It is God in us 
■which checks the language of petition by a grander thought. 
In the bottom of the heart, it is said : ‘ I am, and by me, 0 
child ! this fair body and world of thine stands and grows. I 
am; all things are mine : and all mine are thine.’ 

The festival of the intellect, and the return to its source, 
cast a strong light on the always interesting topics of Man and 
Nature. We are forcibly reminded of the old want. There is 
no man ; there hath never been. The Intellect still asks that 
a man may be born. The flame of life flickers feebly in hu¬ 
man breasts. We demand of men a richness and universality 
we do not find. Great men do not content us. It is their 
solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous. There 
is somewhat indigent and tedious about them. They are 
poorly tied to one thought. If they are prophets, they are 
egotists ; if polite and various, they are shallow. How tardily 
men arrive at any result! how tardily they pass from it to 
another ! The crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as 
the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks 
lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men’s thinkings run 
laterally, never vertically. Here conies by a great inquisitor 
with augur and plumb-line, and will bore an Artesian well 
through our conventions and theories, and pierce to the core of 
things. But as soon as he probes the crust, behold gimlet, 
plumb-line, and philosopher take a lateral direction, in spite of 
all resistance, as if some strong wind took everything off its feet, 
and if you come month after month to see w T hat progress our 
reformer has made, — not an inch has he pierced, — you still 
find him with new words in the old place, flitting about in new 
parts of the same old vein or crust. The new book says, ‘ I 
will give you the key to nature,’ and we expect to go like a 
thunderbolt to the centre. But the thunder is a surface phe¬ 
nomenon, makes a skin-deep cut, and so does the sage. The 
wedge turns out to be a rocket. Thus a man lasts but a very 
little while, for his monomania becomes insupportably tedious 
in a few months. It is so with every book and person : and 
yet — and yet — we do not take up a new book, or meet a 


108 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


new man, without a pulse-beat of expectation. And this in¬ 
vincible hope of a more adequate interpreter is the sure pre¬ 
diction of his advent. 

In the absence of man, we turn to nature, which stands 
next. In the divine order, intellect is primary ; nature, sec¬ 
ondary ; it is the memory of the mind. That which once ex¬ 
isted in intellect as pure law has now taken body as Nature. 
It existed already in the mind in solution ; now, it has been 
precipitated, and the bright sediment is the world. We can 
never be quite strangers or inferiors in nature. It is flesh 
of our flesh, and bone of our bone. But we no longer 
hold it by the hand ; we have lost our miraculous power; our 
arm is no more as strong as the frost; nor our will equivalent 
to gravity and the elective attractions. Yet we can use nature 
as a convenient standard, and the meter of our rise and fall. 
It has this advantage as a witness, it cannot be debauched. 
When man curses, nature still testifies to truth and love. We 
may, therefore, safely study the mind in nature, because we 
cannot steadily gaze on it in mind ; as we explore the face of 
the sun in a pool, when our eyes cannot brook his direct splen¬ 
dors. 

It seems to me, therefore, that it were some suitable paean, 
if we should piously celebrate this hour by exploring the 
method of nature. Let us see that, as nearly as we can, and 
try how far it is transferable to the literary life. Every ear¬ 
nest glance we give to the realities around us, with intent to 
learn, proceeds from a holy impulse, and is really songs of 
praise. What difference can it make whether it take the 
shape of exhortation, or of passionate exclamation, or of scien¬ 
tific statement 3 These are forms merely. Through them, we 
express, at last, the fact that God has done thus or thus. 

In treating a subject so large, in which we must necessarily 
appeal to the intuition, and aim much more to suggest, than 
to describe, I know it is not easy to speak with the precision 
attainable on topics of less scope. I do not wish in attempt¬ 
ing to paint a man, to describe an air-fed, unimpassioned, im¬ 
possible ghost. My eyes and ears are revolted by any neglect 
of the physical facts, the limitations of man. And yet one 
who conceives the true order of nature, and beholds the visible 
as proceeding from the invisible, cannot state his thought, 
without seeming to those who study the physical laws, to do 
them some injustice. There is an intrinsic defect in the organ. 
Language overstates. Statements of the infinite are usually 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


109 


felt to be unjust to the finite, and blasphemous. Empedocles 
undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought, when he said, “I am 
God ” ; but the moment it was out of his mouth, it became a 
lie to the ear; and the world revenged itself for the seeming 
arrogance, by the good story about his shoe. How can I hope 
for better hap in my attempts to enunciate spiritual facts 1 
Yet let us hope, that as far as we receive the truth, so far 
shall we be felt by every true person to say what is just. 

The method of nature : who could ever analyze it 1 That 
rushing steam will not stop to be observed. We can never 
surprise nature in a corner; never find the end of a thread; 
never tell where to set the first stone. The bird hastens to 
lay her egg : the egg hastens to be a bird. The wholeness we 
admire in the order of the world, is the result of infinite dis¬ 
tribution. Its smoothness is the smoothness of the pitch of 
the cataract. Its permanence is a perpetual inchoation. Every 
natural fact is an emanation, and that from which it emanates 
is an emanation also, and from every emanation is a new em¬ 
anation. If anything could stand still, it would be crushed 
and dissipated by the torrent it resisted, and if it were a mind, 
would be crazed; as insane persons are those who hold fast to 
one thought, and do not flow with the course of nature. Not 
the cause, but an ever novel effect, nature descends always 
from above. It is unbroken obedience. The beauty of these 
fair objects is imported into them from a metaphysical and 
eternal spring. In all animal and vegetable forms, the physi¬ 
ologist concedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can account 
for the facts, but a mysterious principle of life must be 
assumed, which not only inhabits the organ, but makes the 
organ. 

How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without 
place to insert an atom, —in graceful succession, in equal ful¬ 
ness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward 
still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a 
sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor 
unravelled, nor shown. Away profane philosopher! seekest 
thou in nature the cause? This refers to that, and that to the 
next, and the next to the third, and everything refers. Thou 
must ask in another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou 
must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists, 
ere thou canst know the law. Known it will not be, but gladly 
beloved and enjoyed. 

The simultaneous life throughout the whole body, the equal 


110 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


serving of innumerable ends without the least emphasis or 
preference to any, but the steady degradation of each to the 
success of all, allows the understanding no place to work. 
Nature can only be conceived as existing to a universal and 
not to a particular end, to a universe of ends, and not to one, 
— a work of ecstasy , to be represented by a circular movement, 
as intention might be signified by a straight line of definite 
length. Each effect strengthens every other. There is no 
revolt in all the kingdoms from the commonweal : no detach¬ 
ment of an individual. Hence the catholic character which 
makes every leaf an exponent of the world. When we behold 
the landscape in a poetic spirit, we do not reckon individuals. 
Nature knows neither palm nor oak, but only vegetable life, 
which sprouts into forests, and festoons the globe with a gar¬ 
land of grasses and vines. 

That no single end may be selected, and nature judged 
thereby, appears from this, that if man himself be considered 
as the end, and it be assumed that the final cause of the world 
is to make holy or wise or beautiful men, we see that it has 
not succeeded. Read alternately in natural and in civil his¬ 
tory, a treatise of astronomy, for example, with a volume of 
French Memoires pour servir. When we have spent our won¬ 
der in computing this wasteful hospitality with which boon 
nature turns off new firmaments without end into her wide 
common, as fast as the madrepores make coral, : — suns and 
planets hospitable to souls, — and then shorten the sight to 
look into this court of Louis Quatorze, and see the game that 
is played there, — duke and marshal, abb6 and madame, — a 
gambling-table where each is laying traps for the other, where 
the end is ever by some lie or fetch to outwit your rival and 
ruin him with this solemn fop in wig and stars, — the king ; 
one can hardly help asking if this planet is a fair specimen of 
the so generous astronomy, and if so, whether the experi¬ 
ment have not failed, and whether it be quite worth while 
to make more, and glut the innocent space with so poor an 
article. 

I think we feel not much otherwise if, instead of beholding 
foolish nations, we take the great and wise men, the eminent 
souls, and narrowly inspect their biography. None of them 
seen by himself, — and his performance compared with his 
promise or idea, will justify the cost of that enormous appara¬ 
tus of means by which this spotted and defective person was 
at last procured. 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


Ill 


To questions of this sort, nature replies, * I grow.’ All is 
nascent, infant. When we are dizzied with the arithmetic of 
the savant toiling to compute the length of her line, the re¬ 
turn of her curve, we are steadied by the perception that a 
great deal is doing; that all seems just begun; remote aims 
are in active accomplishment. We can point nowhere to any¬ 
thing final; but tendency appears on all hands : planet, sys¬ 
tem, constellation, total nature is growing like a field of maize 
in J uly ; is becoming somewhat else ; is in rapid metamorpho¬ 
sis. The embryo does not more strive to be man, than yonder 
burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a 
globe, and parent of new stars. Why should not then these 
messieurs of Versailles strut and plot for tabourets and ribbons, 
for a season, without prejudice to their faculty to run on better 
errands by and by 1 

But nature seems further to reply : ‘ I have ventured so 
great a stake as my success, in no single creature. I have not 
yet arrived at any end. The gardener aims to produce a fine 
peach or pear, but my aim is the health of the whole tree, — 
root, stem, leaf, flower, and seed, — and by no means the 
pampering of a monstrous pericarp at the expense of all the 
other functions.’ 

In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that impression na¬ 
ture makes on us, is this, that it does not exist to any one or 
to any number of particular ends, but to numberless and end¬ 
less benefit; that there is in it no private will, no rebel leaf or 
limb, but the whole is oppressed by one superincumbent ten¬ 
dency, obeys that redundancy or excess of life which in con¬ 
scious beings we call ecstasy. 

With this conception of the genius or method of nature, 
let us go back to man. It is true, he pretends to give ac¬ 
count of himself to himself, but at last, what has he to recite 
but the fact that there is a Life not to be described or known 
otherwise than by possession % What account can he give of 
his essence more than so it was to be ? 1 he royal reason, the 

Grace of God, seems the only description of our multiform but 
ever identical fact. There is virtue, there is genius, there is 
success, or there is not. There is the incoming or the reced¬ 
ing of God : that is all that we can affirm; and we can show 
neither how nor why. Self-accusation, remorse, and the di¬ 
dactic morals of self-denial and strife with sin, are in the view 
we are constrained by our constitution to take of the fact seen 
from the platform of action; but seen from the platform of 
intellection, there is nothing for us but praise and wonder. 


112 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


The termination of the world in a man, appears to be the 
last victory of intelligence. The universal does not attract 
us until housed in an individual. Who heeds the waste abyss 
of possibility 1 The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has 
no character until seen with the shore or the ship. Who would 
value any number of miles of Atlantic brine bounded by lines 
of latitude and longitude 1 Confine it by granite rocks, let it 
wash a shore where wise men dwell, and it is filled with ex¬ 
pression ; and the point of greatest interest is where the land 
and water meet. So must we admire in man, the form of the 
formless, the concentration of the vast, the house of reason, 
the cave of memory. See the play of thoughts ! what nim¬ 
ble gigantic creatures are these ! what saurians, what palai- 
otheria shall be named with these agile movers 1 The great 
Pan of old, who was clothed in a leopard-skin to signify the 
beautiful variety of things, and the firmament, his coat of 
stars, — was but the representative of thee, 0 rich and various 
Man ! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses 
the morning and the night and the unfathomable galaxy; in Thy 
brain, the geometry of the City of God ; in thy heart, the bower 
of love and the realms of right and wrong. An individual man 
is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and 
ripen. The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats 
itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or 
god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to 
lead things from disorder into order. Each individual soul is 
such, in virtue of its being a power to translate the world into 
some particular language of its own; if not into a picture, a 
statue, or a dance, — why, then, into a trade, an art, a science, 
a mode of living, a conversation, a character, an influence. 
You admire pictures, but it is as impossible for you to paint a 
right picture, as for grass to bear apples. But when the genius 
comes, it makes fingers : it is pliancy, and the power of trans¬ 
ferring the affair in the street into oils and colors. Raphael 
must be born, and Salvator must be born. 

There is no attractiveness like that of a new man. The 
sleepy nations are occupied with their political routine. Eng¬ 
land, France, and America read Parliamentary Debates, which 
no high genius now enlivens ; and nobody will read them who 
trusts his own eye : only they who are deceived by the popu¬ 
lar repetition of distinguished names. But when Napoleon 
unrolls his map, the eye is commanded by original power. 
When Chatham leads the debate, men may well listen, because 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


113 


they must listen. A man, a personal ascendency, is the only 
great phenomenon. When nature has work to be done, she 
creates a genius to do it. Follow the great man, and you shall 
see what the world has at heart in these ages. There is no 
omen like that. 

But what strikes us in the fine genius is that which belongs 
of right to every one. A man should know himself for a ne¬ 
cessary actor. A link was wanting between two craving parts 
of nature, and he was hurled into being as the bridge over 
that yawning need, the mediator betwixt two else unmarriage- 
able facts. His two parents held each of one of the wants, 
and the union of foreign constitutions in him enables him to 
do gladly and gracefully what the assembled human race could 
not have sufficed to do. He knows his materials ; he applies 
himself to his work; he cannot read, or think, or look, but he 
unites the hitherto separated strands into a perfect cord. The 
thoughts he delights to utter are the reason of his incarnation 1 
Is it for him to account himself cheap and superfluous, or to 
linger by the wayside for opportunities 1 Did he not come 
into being because something must be done which he and no 
other is and does 1 If only he sees, the world will be visible 
enough. He need not study where to stand, nor to put things 
in favorable lights; in him is the light, from him all things 
are illuminated to their centre. What patron shall he ask for 
employment and reward 1 Hereto was he born, to deliver the 
thought of his heart from the universe to the universe, to do 
an office which nature could not forego, nor he be discharged 
from rendering, and then immerge again into the holy silence 
and eternity out of which as a man he arose. God is rich, 
and many more men than one he harbors in his bosom, biding 
their time and the needs and the beauty of all. Is not this 
the theory of every man’s genius or faculty 1 Why then goest 
thou as some Boswell or listening worshipper to this saint or 
to that 1 That is the only lese-majesty. Here art thou with 
whom so long the universe travailed in labor; darest thou 
think meanly of thyself whom the stalwart Fate brought forth 
to unite his ragged sides, to shoot the gulf, to reconcile the 
irreconcilable 1 

Whilst a necessity so great caused the man to exist, his 
health and erectness consist in the fidelity with which he trans¬ 
mits influences from the vast and universal to the point on 
which his genius can act. The ends are momentary : they are 
vents for the current of inward life which increases as it is 


114 


THE METHOD OF NATUKE. 


spent. A man’s wisdom is to know that all ends are momen¬ 
tary, that the best end must be superseded by a better. But 
there is a mischievous tendency in him to transfer his thought 
from the life to the ends, to quit his agency and rest in his acts : 
the tools run away with the workman, the human with the 
divine. I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, 
and unable to turn his head and see the speaker. In all the 
millions who have heard the voice, none ever saw the face. As 
children in their play run behind each other, and seize one by 
the ears and make him walk before them, so is the spirit our 
unseen pilot. That well-known voice speaks in all languages, 
governs all men, and none ever caught a glimpse of its form. 
If the man will exactly obey it, it will adopt him, so that he 
shall not any longer separate it from himself in his thought, he 
shall seem to be it, he shall be it. If he listen with insatiable 
ears, richer and greater wisdom is taught him, the sound swells 
to a ravishing music, he is borne away as with a flood, he be¬ 
comes careless of his food and of his house, he is the drinker 
of ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if his eye is set on the 
things to be done, and not on the truth that is still taught, 
and for the sake of which the things are to be done, then the 
voice grows faint, and at last is but a humming in his ears. 
His health and greatness consist in his being the channel 
through which heaven flows to earth, in short, in the fulness 
in which an ecstatical state takes place in him. It is pitiful to 
be an artist, when, by forbearing to be artists, we might be 
vessels filled with the divine overflowings, enriched by the cir¬ 
culations of omniscience and omnipresence. Are there not 
moments in the history of heaven when the human race was 
not counted by individuals, but was only the Influenced, was 
God in distribution, God rushing into multiform benefit 1 It 
is sublime to receive, sublime to love, but this lust of imparting 
as from us, this desire to be loved, the wish to be recognized 
as individuals, — is finite, comes of a lower strain. 

Shall I say, then, that, as far as we can trace the natural 
history of the soul, its health consists in the fulness of its re¬ 
ception, — call it piety, call it veneration, — in the fact, that 
enthusiasm is organized therein. What is best in any work 
of art, but that part which the work itself seems to require 
and do; that which the man cannot do again, that which flows 
from the hour and the occasion, like the eloquence of men in 
a tumultuous debate 1 It was always the theory of literature, 
that the word of a poet was authoritative and final. He was 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


115 


supposed to be the mouth of a divine wisdom. We rather 
envied his circumstance than his talent. We too could have 
gladly prophesied standing in that place. We so quote our 
Scriptures; and the Greeks so quoted Homer, Theognis, Pindar, 
and the rest. If the theory has receded out of modern criti¬ 
cism, it is because we have not had poets. Whenever they 
-appear, they will redeem their own credit. 

This ecstatical state seems to direct a regard to the whole and 
not to the parts; to the cause and not to the ends; to the 
tendency, and not to the act. It respects genius and not talent; 
hope, and not possession ; the anticipation of all things by the 
intellect, and not the history itself ; art, and not works of art; 
poetry, and not experiment; virtue, and not duties. 

There is no office or function of man but is rightly discharged 
by this divine method, and nothing that is not noxious to him if 
detached from its universal relations. Is it his work in the world 
to study nature, or the laws of the world 1 Let him beware of 
proposing to himself any end. Is it for use 1 nature is debased, 
as if one looking at the ocean can remember only the price of 
fish. Or is it for pleasure 1 he is mocked: there is a certain infat¬ 
uating air in woods and mountains which draws on the idler to 
want and misery. There is something social and intrusive in 
the nature of all things ; they seek to penetrate and overpower, 
each the nature of every other creature, and itself alone in all 
modes and throughout space and spirit to prevail and possess. 
Every star in heaven is discontented and insatiable. Gravita¬ 
tion and chemistry cannot content them. Ever they' woo and 
court the eye of every beholder. Every man who comes into 
the world they seek to fascinate and possess, to pass into his 
mind, for they desire to republish themselves in a more delicate 
world than that they occupy. It is not enough that they are 
Jove, Mars, Orion, and the North Star, in the gravitating fir¬ 
mament : they would have such poets as Newton, Herschel, and 
Laplace, that they may re-exist and reappear in the finer world 
of rational souls, and fill that realm with their fame. So is it 
with all immaterial objects. These beautiful basilisks set their 
brute, glorious eyes on the eye of every child, and, if they can, 
cause their nature to pass through his wondering eyes into 
him, and so all things are mixed. 

Therefore man must be on his guard against this cup of en¬ 
chantments, and must look at nature with a supernatural eye. 
By piety alone, by conversing with the cause of nature, is he 
safe and commands it. And because all knowledge is assimi- 


116 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


lation to the object of knowledge, as the power or genius of 
nature is ecstatic, so must its science or the description of it 
be. The poet must be a rhapsodist; his inspiration a sort of 
bright casualty : his will in it only the surrender of will to the 
Universal Power, which will not be seen face to face, but must 
be received and sympathetically known. It is remarkable that 
we have out of the deeps of antiquity in the oracles ascribed 
to the half-fabulous Zoroaster, a statement of this fact, which 
every lover and seeker of truth will recognize. “ It is not 
proper,” said Zoroaster, “ to understand the Intelligible with 
vehemence, but if you incline your mind, you will apprehend 
it : not too earnestly but bringing a pure and inquiring eye. 
You will not understand it as when understanding some par¬ 
ticular thing, but with the flower of the mind. Things divine 
are not attainable by mortals who understand sensual things, 
but only the light-armed arrive at the summit.” 

And because ecstasy is the law and cause of nature, therefore 
you cannot interpret it in too high and deep a sense. Nature 
represents the best meaning of the wisest man. Does the sun¬ 
set landscape seem to you the palace of Friendship, — those 
purple skies and lovely waters the amphitheatre dressed and 
garnished only for the exchange of thought and love of the 
purest souls 1 It is that. All other meanings which base 
men have put on it are conjectural and false. You “ cannot 
bathe twice in the same river,” said Heraclitus, for it is renewed 
every moment; and I add, a man never sees the same object 
twice : with his own enlargement the object acquires new as¬ 
pects. 

Does not the same law hold for virtue 1 It is vitiated by too 
much will. He who aims at progress, should aim at an infinite, 
not at a special benefit. The reforms whose fame now fills the 
land with Temperance, Antislavery, Non-Resistance, No Gov¬ 
ernment, Equal Labor, fair and generous as each appears, are 
poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end. 
To every reform in proportion to its energy, early disgusts are 
incidents, so that the disciple is surprised at the very hour of 
his first triumphs, with chagrins, and sickness, and a general 
distrust : so that he shuns his associates, hates the enterprise 
which lately seemed so fair, and meditates to cast himself into 
the arms of that society and manner of life which he had newly 
abandoned with so much pride and hope. Is it that he attached 
the value of virtue to some particular practices, as the denial 
of certain appetites in certain specified indulgences, and, after- 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


17 


ward, found himself still as wicked and as far from happiness 
in that abstinence as he had been in the abuse 1 But the soul 
can be appeased not by a deed but by a tendency. It is in a 
hope that she feels her wings. You shall love rectitude and 
not the disuse of money or the avoidance of trade; an unim¬ 
peded mind, and not a monkish diet j sympathy and usefulness, 
and not hoeing or coopering. Tell me not how great your 
project js, the civil liberation of the world, its conversion into 
a Christian church, the establishment of public education, 
cleaner diet, a new division of labor and of land, laws of love 
for laws of property ; — I say to you plainly there is no end to 
which your practical faculty can aim, so sacred or so large, that, 
if pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an 
offence to the nostril. The imaginative faculty of the soul 
must be fed with objects immense and eternal. Your end 
should be one inapprehensible to the senses : then will it be a 
god always approached, — never touched ; always giving health. 
A man adorns himself with prayer and love, as an aim adorns 
an action. What is strong but goodness, and what is energetic 
but the presence of a brave man 1 The doctrine in vegetable 
physiology of the presence, or the general influence of any 
substance over and above its chemical influence, as of an alkali 
or a living plant, is more predicable of man. You need not 
speak to me, I need not go where you are, that you should ex¬ 
ert magnetism on me. Be you only whole and sufficient, and I 
shall feel you in every part of my life and fortune, and I can 
as easily dodge the gravitation of the globe as escape your in¬ 
fluence. 

But there are other examples of this total and supreme in¬ 
fluence, besides Nature and the conscience. “ From the poison¬ 
ous tree, the world,” say the Brahmins, “ two species of fruit 
are produced, sweet as the waters of life, Love or the society 
of beautiful souls, and Poetry, whose, taste is like the immortal 
juice of Vishnu.” What is Love, and why is it the chief good, 
but because it is an overpowering enthusiasm ? Never self- 
possessed or prudent, it is all abandonment. Is it not a certain 
admirable wisdom, preferable to all other advantages, and 
whereof all others are only secondaries and indemnities, be¬ 
cause this is that in which the individual is no longer his own 
foolish master, but inhales an odorous and celestial air, is 
wrapped round with awe of the object, blending for the time 
that object with the real and only good, and consults every 
omen in nature with tremulous interest. When we speak 


118 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


truly, — is not he only unhappy who is not in love ? his fan¬ 
cied freedom and self-rule, — is it not so much death 1 He 
who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every 
time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his 
eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. Therefore 
if the object be not itself a living and expanding soul, he pres¬ 
ently exhausts it. But the love remains in his mind, and the 
wisdom it brought him; and it craves a new and higher ob¬ 
ject. And the reason why all men honor love, is because it 
looks up and not down ; aspires and not despairs. 

And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love 
of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a 
new picture or copy of the same 1 It looks to the cause and 
life ; it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from 
without inward. Talent finds its models, methods, and ends, 
in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for 
power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means 
and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only 
for audience, and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase 
to the distance and character of the ear we speak to. All your 
learning of all literatures would never enable you to anticipate 
one of its thoughts or expressions, and yet each is natural and 
familiar as household words. Here about us coils forever the 
ancient enigma, so old and so unutterable. Behold! there is 
the sun, and the rain, and the rocks: the old sun the old stones. 
How easy were it to describe all this fitly; yet no word can 
pass. Nature is a mute, and man, her articulate speaking 
brother, lo ! he also is a mute. Yet when Genius arrives, its 
speech is like a river; it has no straining to describe, more than 
there is straining in nature to exist. When thought is best, 
there is most of it. Genius sheds wisdom like perfume, and 
advertises us that it flows out of a deeper source than the fore¬ 
going silence, that it knows so deeply and speaks so musically, 
because it is itself a mutation of the thing it describes. It is 
sun and moon and wave and fire in music, as astronomy is 
thought and harmony in masses of matter. 

What is all history but the work of ideas, a record of the 
incomputable energy which his infinite aspirations infuse into 
man 1 Has anything grand and lasting been done 1 Who did 
it 1 Plainly not any man, but all men : it was the prevalence 
and inundation of an idea. What brought the pilgrims here 1 
One man says, civil liberty; another, the desire of founding a 
church; and a third, discovers that the motive force was plan- 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


119 


tation. and trade. But if the Puritans could rise from the dust, 
they could not answer. It is to be seen in what they were, 
and not in what they designed ; it was the growth and expan¬ 
sion of the human race, and resembled herein the sequent 
Revolution, which was not begun in Concord, or Lexington, or 
Virginia, but was the overflowing of the sense of natural right, 
in every clear and active spirit of the period. Is a man boast¬ 
ful and knowing, and his own master! — we turn from him 
without hope: but let him be filled with awe and dread before 
the Vast and the Divine, which uses him glad to be used, and 
our eye is riveted to the chain of events. What a debt is 
ours to that old religion which, in the childhood of most of us, 
still dwelt like a Sabbath morning in the country of New Eng¬ 
land, teaching privation, self-denial, and sorrow ! A man was 
born not for prosperity, but to suffer for the benefit of others, 
like the noble rock-maple which all around our villages bleeds 
for the service of man. Not praise, not men’s acceptance of 
our doing, but the spirit’s holy errand through us absorbed 
the thought. How dignified was this ! How all that is called 
talents and success, in our noisy capitals, becomes buzz and 
din before this man-worthiness ! How our friendships and the 
complaisances we use, shame us now ! Shall we not quit our 
companions, as if they were thieves and pot companions, and 
betake ourselves to some desert cliff* of Mount Katahdin, some 
unvisited recess in Moosehead Lake, to bewail our innocency 
and to recover it, and wflth it the powder to communicate again 
with these sharers of a more sacred idea 1 

And what is to replace for us the piety of that race 1 We 
cannot have theirs : it glides aw r ay from us day by day, but 
we also can bask in the great morning which rises forever out 
of the eastern sea, and be ourselves the children of the light. 
I stand here to say, Let us worship the mighty and transcend¬ 
ent Soul. It is the office, I doubt not, of this age to annul 
that adulterous divorce which the superstition of many ages 
has effected between the intellect and holiness. The lovers of 
goodness have been one class, the students of wisdom another, 
as if either could exist in any purity without the other. 
Truth is always holy, holiness always wise. I will that we 
keep terms with sin, and a sinful literature and society, no 
longer, but live a life of discovery and performance. Accept 
the intellect, and it will accept us. Be the lowly ministers of 
that pure omniscience, and deny it not before men. It will 
burn up all profane literature, all base current opinions, all 


120 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


the false powers of the world, as in a moment of time. I 
draw from nature the lesson of any intimate divinity. Our 
health and reason as men needs our respect to this fact, against 
the heedlessness and against the contradiction of society. 
The sanity of man needs the poise of this immanent force. 
His nobility needs the assurance of this inexhaustible reserved 
power. How great soever have been its bounties, they are a 
drop to the sea whence they flow. If you say, ‘ the acceptance 
of the vision is also the act of God ’: — I shall not seek to 
penetrate the mystery, I admit the force of what you say. If 
you ask, ‘ How can any rules be given for the attainment of 
gifts so sublime 1 ’ I shall only remark that the solicitations 
of this spirit, as long as there is life, are never forborne. 
Tenderly, tenderly, they woo and court us from every object 
in nature, from every fact in life, from every thought in the 
mind. The one condition coupled with the gift of truth is 
its use. That man shall be learned who reduceth his learning 
to practice. Emanuel Swedenborg affirmed that it was opened 
to him, “ that the spirits who knew truth in this life, but did 
it not, at death shall lose their knowledge.” “ If knowledge,” 
said Ali the Caliph, “ calleth unto practice, well; if not it 
goeth away.” The only way into nature is to enact our best 
insight. Instantly we are higher poets, and can speak a deep¬ 
er law. Do what you know, and perception is converted into 
character, as islands and continents were built by invisible 
infusories, or, as these forest leaves absorb light, electricity, 
and volatile gases, and the gnarled oak to live a thousand 
years is the arrest and fixation of the most volatile and 
ethereal currents. The doctrine of this Supreme Presence is 
a cry of joy and exultation. Who shall dare think he has 
come late into nature, or has missed anything excellent in the 
past, who seeth the admirable stars of possibility, and the yet 
untouched continent of hope glittering with all its mountains 
in the vast West 1 I praise with wonder this great reality, 
which seems to drown all things in the deluge of its light. 
What man seeing this, can lose it from his thoughts, or enter¬ 
tain a meaner subject 1 The entrance of this into his mind 
seems to be the birth of man. We cannot describe the natural 
history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. I cannot 
tell if these wonderful qualities which house to-day in this 
mortal frame, shall ever reassemble in equal activity in a 
similar frame, or whether they have before had a natural 
history like that of this body you see before j^ou; but this 


THE METHOD OF NATURE. 


121 


one thing I know, that these qualities did not now begin to 
exist, cannot be sick with my sickness, nor buried in any 
grave ; but that they circulate through the Universe : before 
the -world was, they were. Nothing can bar them out, or shut 
them in, they penetrate the ocean and land, space and time, 
form and essence, and hold the key to universal nature. I 
draw from this faith courage and hope. All things are known 
to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. 
Nothing can be greater than it. Let those fear and those 
fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm, and it is 
wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. 
Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn: 
they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and 
goes out through universal love to universal power. 


VOL. i. 6 



/ 


















MAN THE REFORMER. 


A Lecture read before the Mechanics’ Apprentices’ Library 
Association, Boston, January 25 , 1841 . 















HEA 

-A-TR 



ARTERS 


t 6 



-' ICJEiB 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


M R. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN: — 

I wish to offer to your consideration some thoughts on 
the particular and general relations of man as a reformer. I 
shall assume that the aim of each young man in this association 
is the very highest that belongs to a rational mind. Let it be 
granted that our life, as we lead it, is common and mean; 
that some of those offices and functions for which we were 
mainly created are grown so rare in society, that the memory 
of them is only kept alive in old books and in dim traditions ; 
that prophets and poets, that beautiful and perfect men, we 
are not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some sources 
of human instruction are almost unnamed and unknown among 
us ; that the community in which we live will hardly bear to 
be told that every man should be open to ecstasy or a divine 
illumination, and his daily walk elevated by intercourse with 
the spiritual world. Grant all this, as we must, yet I suppose 
none of my auditors will deny that we ought to seek to estab¬ 
lish ourselves in such disciplines and courses as will deserve 
that guidance and clearer communication with the spiritual 
nature. And further, I will not dissemble my hope, that each 
person w T hom I address has felt his own call to cast aside all evil 
customs, timidities, and limitations, and to be in his place a free 
and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip 
along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by 
his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a 
brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight road 
to everything excellent on the earth, and not only go honora¬ 
bly himself, but make it easier for all who follow him, to go in 
honor and with benefit. 

In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had nev¬ 
er such scope as at the present hour. Lutherans, Hernhut- 
ters, Jesuits, Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, 



126 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


Bentham, *in their accusations of society, all respected some¬ 
thing, — church or state, literature or history, domestic 
usages, the market town, the dinner-table, coined money. 
But now all these and all things else hear the trumpet, and 
must rush to judgment, — Christianity, the laws, commerce, 
schools, the farm, the laboratory; and not a kingdom, town, 
statute, rite, calling, man, or woman, but is threatened by the 
new spirit. 

What if some of the objections whereby our institutions are 
assailed are extreme and speculative, and the reformers tend 
to idealism; that only shows the extravagance of the abuses 
which have driven the mind into the opposite extreme. It is 
when your facts and persons grow unreal and fantastic by too 
much falsehood, that the scholar flies for refuge to the world 
of ideas, and aims to recruit and replenish nature from that 
source. Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in so¬ 
ciety, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be 
lovers, citizens, and philanthropists. 

It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old 
nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions of 
a hundred cities, are built on other foundations. The demon 
of reform has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker, 
of every inhabitant of every city. The fact that a new thought 
and hope have dawned in your breast, should apprise you that 
in the same hour a new light broke in upon a thousand private 
hearts. That secret which you w’ould fain keep, — as soon as 
you go abroad, lo ! there is one standing on the doorstep, to tell 
you the same. There is not the most bronzed and sharpened 
money-catcher, who does not, to your consternation, almost 
quail and shake the moment he hears a question prompted by 
the new ideas. We thought he had some semblance of ground 
to stand upon, that such as he at least would die hard ; but he 
trembles and flees. Then the scholar says, ‘ Cities and coaches 
shall never impose on me again; for, behold every solitary 
dream of mine is rushing to fulfilment. That fancy I had, and 
hesitated to utter because you would laugh, — lo, the broker, 
the attorney, the market-man are saying the same thing. Had 
I waited a day longer to speak, I had been too late. Behold, 
State Street thinks, and Wall Street doubts, and begins to 
prophesy ! ’ 

It cannot be wondered at, that this general inquest into 
abuses should arise in the bosom of society, when one consid¬ 
ers the practical impediments that stand in the way of virtu- 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


127 


ous young men. The young man, on entering life, finds the 
way to lucrative employments blocked with abuses. The ways 
of trade are grown selfish to the borders of theft, and supple 
to the borders (if not beyond the borders) of fraud. The em¬ 
ployments of commerce are not intrinsically unfit for a man, or 
less genial to his faculties, but these are now in their general 
course so vitiated by derelictions and abuses at which all con¬ 
nive, that it requires more vigor and resources than can be 
expected of every young man, to right himself in them ; he is 
lost in them ; he cannot move hand or foot in them. Has he 
genius and virtue % the less does he find them fit for him to grow 
in, and if he would thrive in them, he must sacrifice all the bril¬ 
liant dreams of boyhood and youth as dreams ; he must forget 
the prayers of his childhood ; and must take on him the harness 
of routine and obsequiousness. If not so minded, nothing is 
left him but to begin the world anew, as he does who puts 
the spade into the ground for food. We are all implicated, 
of course, in this charge; it is only necessary to ask a few 
questions as to the progress of the articles of commerce, from 
the fields where they grew, to our houses, to become aware 
that we eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hun¬ 
dred commodities. How many articles of daily consumption 
are furnished us from the West Indies; yet it is said, that, in 
the Spanish islands, the venality of the officers of the govern¬ 
ment has passed into usage, and that no article passes into our 
ships which has not been fraudulently cheapened. In the 
Spanish islands, every agent or factor of the Americans, unless 
he be a consul, has taken oath that he is a Catholic, or has 
caused a priest to make that declaration for him. The abo¬ 
litionist has shown us our dreadful debt to the Southern ne¬ 
gro. In the island of Cuba, in addition to the ordinary abom¬ 
inations of slavery, it appears, only men are bought for the 
plantations, and one dies in ten every year, of these miserable 
bachelors, to yield us sugar. I leave for those who have the 
knowledge the part of sifting the oaths of our custom-houses ; 
I will not inquire into the oppression of the sailors ; I will not 
pry into the usages of our retail trade. I content myself with 
the fact, that the general system of our trade (apart from the 
blacker traits, which, I hope, are exceptions denounced and un¬ 
shared by all reputable men) is a system of selfishness; is 
not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature; is not 
measured by the exact law of reciprocity; much less by the 
sentiments of love and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of 


128 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


concealment, of superior keenness, not of giving but of taking 
advantage. It is not that which a man delights to unlock to 
a noble friend; which he meditates on with joy and self¬ 
approval in his hour of love and aspiration; but rather what 
he then puts out of sight, only showing the brilliant result, and 
atoning for the manner of acquiring, by the manner of expend¬ 
ing it. I do not charge the merchant or the manufacturer. 
The sins of our trade belong to no class, to no individual. One 
plucks, one distributes, one eats. Everybody partakes, every¬ 
body confesses, — with cap and knee volunteers his confession, 
yet none feels himself accountable. He did not create the 
abuse; he cannot alter it. What is he 1 an obscure private 
person who must get his bread. That is the vice, — that no 
one feels himself called to act for man, but only as a frac¬ 
tion of man. It happens therefore that all suph ingenuous 
souls as feel within themselves the irrepressible strivings of 
a noble aim, who by the law of their nature must act sim¬ 
ply, find these ways of trade unfit for them, and they come 
forth from it. Such cases are becoming more numerous every 
year. 

But by coming out of trade you have not cleared yourself. 
The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions 
and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds 
a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for 
success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting 
of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an accept¬ 
ance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of gener¬ 
osity and love, a compromise of private opinion and integrity. 
Nay, the evil custom reaches into the whole institution of 
property, until our laws which establish and protect it seem 
not to be the issue of love and reason, but of selfishness. Sup¬ 
pose a man is so unhappy as to be born a saint, with keen 
perceptions, but with the conscience and love of an angel, and 
he is to get his living in the world ; he finds himself excluded 
from all lucrative works; he has no farm, and he cannot get 
one ; for, to earn money enough to buy one, requires a sort of 
concentration toward money, which is the selling himself for a 
number of years, and to him the present hour is as sacred and 
inviolable as any future hour. Of course, whilst another man 
has no land, my title to mine, your title to yours, is at once 
vitiated. Inextricable seem to be the twinings and tendrils 
of this evil, and we all involve ourselves in it the deeper by 
forming connections, by wives and children, by benefits and 
debts. 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


129 


Considerations of this kind have turned the attention of 
many philanthropic and intelligent persons to the claims of 
manual labor, as a part of the education of every young man. 
If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus 
tainted, — no matter how much of it is offered to us, — we 
must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to re¬ 
nounce it, and to put ourselves into primary relations with the 
soil and nature, and, abstaining from whatever is dishonest and 
unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own 
hands in the manual labor of the world. 

But it is said, ‘ What! will you give up the immense ad¬ 
vantages reaped from the division of labor, and set every man 
to make his own shoes, bureau, knife, wagon, sails, and needle ? 
This would be to put men back into barbarism by their own 
act.’ I see no instant prospect of a virtuous revolution ; yet 
I confess, I should not be pained at a change which threatened 
a loss of some of the luxuries or conveniences of society, if it 
proceeded from a preference of the agricultural life out of the 
belief that our primary duties as men could be better dis¬ 
charged in that calling. Who could regret to see a high con¬ 
science and a purer taste exercising a sensible effect on young 
men in their choice of occupation, and thinning the ranks of 
competition in the labors of commerce, of law, and of state ? 
It is easy to see that the inconvenience would last but a short 
time. This would be great action, which always opens the 
eyes of men. When many persons shall have done this, when 
the majority shall admit the necessity of reform in all these 
institutions, their abuses will be redressed, and the way will 
be open again to the advantages which arise from the division 
of labor, and a man may select the fittest employment for his 
peculiar talent again, without compromise. 

But quite apart from the emphasis which the times give to 
the doctrine, that the manual labor of society ought to be 
shared among all the members, there are reasons proper to 
every individual, why he should not be deprived of it. The 
use of manual labor is one which never grows obsolete, and 
which is inapplicable to no person. A man should have a 
farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have 
a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertain¬ 
ments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands. 
We must have an antagonism in the tough world for all the 
variety of our spiritual faculties, or they will not be born. 
Manual labor is the study of the external world. The advan- 

6 * i 


130 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


tage of riches remains with him who procured them, not with 
the heir. When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a 
bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health, that I discover 
that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting 
others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. 
But not only health, but education is in the work. Is it pos¬ 
sible that I who get indefinite quantities of sugar, hominy, 
cotton, buckets, crockery-ware, and letter-paper, by simply 
signing my name once in three months to a check in favor 
of John Smith & Co., traders, get the fair share of exercise 
to my faculties by that act, which nature intended for me in 
making all these far-fetched matters important to my comfort] 
It is Smith himself, and his earners, and dealers, and manu¬ 
facturers, it is the sailor, the hide-drogher, the butcher, the 
negro, the hunter, and the planter, who have intercepted the 
sugar of the sugar, and the cotton of the cotton. They have 
got the education, I only the commodity. This were all very 
well if I were necessarily absent, being detained by work of 
my own, like theirs, work of the same faculties; then should 
I be sure of my hands and feet, but now I feel some shame 
before my wood-chopper, my ploughman, and my cook, for they 
have some sort of self-sufficiency, they can contrive without 
my aid to bring the day and year round, but I depend on 
them, and have not earned by use a right to my arms and 
feet. 

Consider further the difference between the first and second 
owner of property. Every species of property is preyed on 
by its own enemies, as iron by rust; timber by rot; cloth by 
moths ; provisions by mould, putridity, or vermin ; money 
by thieves; an orchard by insects; a planted field by weeds 
and the inroad of cattle ; a stock of cattle by hunger; a road 
by rain and frost; a bridge by freshets. And whoever takes 
any of these things into his possession, takes the charge of 
defending them from this troop of enemies, or of keeping 
them in repair. A man who supplies his own want, who 
builds a raft or a boat to go a-fishing, finds it easy to calk it, 
or put in a thole-pin, or mend the rudder. What he gets only 
as fast as he wants for his own ends, does not embarrass him, 
or take away his sleep with looking after. But when he comes 
to give all the goods he has year after year collected, in one 
estate to his son, house, orchard, ploughed land, cattle, bridges, 
hardware, wooden-ware, carpets, cloths, provisions, books, 
money, and cannot give him the skill and experience which 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


131 


made or collected these, and the method and place they have 
in his own life, the son finds his hands full, — not to use these 
things, — but to look after them and defend them from their 
natural enemies. To him they are not means, but masters. 
Their enemies will not remit; rust, mould, vermin, rain, sun, 
freshet, fire, all seize their own, fill him with vexation, and he 
is converted from the owner into a watchman or a watch-dog 
to this magazine of old and new chattels. What a change! 
Instead of the masterly good-humor, and sense of power, and 
fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong and 
learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes, that supple 
body, and that mighty and prevailing heart, which the father 
had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow and rain, 
■water and land, beast and fish, seemed all to know and to 
serve, we have now a puny, protected person, guarded by 
walls and curtains, stoves and down beds, coaches, and men- 
servants and women-servants from the earth and the sky, and 
who, bred to depend on all these, is made anxious by all that 
endangers those possessions, and is forced to spend so much 
time in guarding them, that he has quite lost sight of their 
original use, namely, to help him to his ends, — to the prose¬ 
cution of his love ; to the helping of his friend, to the worship 
of his God, to the enlargement of his knowledge, to the serv¬ 
ing of his country, to the indulgence of his sentiment, and he 
is now what is called a rich man, — the menial and runner 
of his riches. 

Hence it happens that the whole interest of history lies in 
the fortunes of the poor. Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the 
victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion 
of the world. Every man ought to have this opportunity to 
conquer the world for himself. Only such persons interest us, 
Spartans, Romans, Saracens, English, Americans, who have 
stood in the jaws of need, and have by their own wit and might 
extricated themselves, and made man victorious. 

I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of labor, or insist 
that every man should be a farmer, anymore than that every 
man should be a lexicographer. In general, one may say, that 
the husbandman’s is the oldest, and most universal profession, 
and that where a man does not yet discover in himself any 
fitness for one work more than another, this may be preferred. 
But the doctrine of the Farm is merely this, that every man 
ought to stand in primary relations with the work of the world, 
ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the accident of his hav- 


132 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


ing a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishon¬ 
orable and injurious craft, to sever him from those duties ; and 
for this reason, that labor is God’s education ; that he only is a 
sincere learner, he only can become a master, who learns the 
secrets of labor, and who by real cunning extorts from nature 
its sceptre. 

Neither would I shut my ears to the plea of the learned pro¬ 
fessions, of the poet, the priest, the lawgiver, and men of study 
generally; namely, that in the experience of all men of that 
class, the amount of manual labor which is necessary to the 
maintenance of a family indisposes and disqualifies for intel¬ 
lectual exertion. I know, it often, perhaps usually, happens, 
that where there is a fine organization apt for poetry and phi¬ 
losophy, that individual finds himself compelled to wait on his 
thoughts, to waste several days that he may enhance and glorify 
one; and is better taught by a moderate and dainty exercise, 
such as rambling in the fields, rowing, skating, hunting, than 
by the downright drudgery of the farmer and the smith. I 
would not quite forget the venerable counsel of the Egyptian 
mysteries, which declared that “ there were two pairs of eyes 
in man, and it is requisite that the pair which are beneath 
should be closed, when the pair that are above them perceive, 
and that when the pair above are closed, those which are beneath 
should be opened.” Yet I will suggest that no separation from 
labor can be without some loss of power and of truth to the 
seer himself; that, I doubt not, the faults and vices of our 
literature and philosophy, their too great fineness, effeminacy, 
and melancholy, are attributable to the enervated and sickly 
habits of the literary class. Better that the book should not 
be quite so good, and the bookmaker abler and better, and not 
himself often a ludicrous contrast to all that he has written. 

But granting that for ends so sacred and dear, some relaxation 
must be had, I think, that if a man find in himself any strong 
bias to poetry, to art, to the contemplative life, drawing him to 
these things with a devotion incompatible with good husbandry, 
that man ought to reckon early with himself, and, respecting 
the compensations of the Universe, ought to ransom himself 
from the duties of economy, by a certain rigor and privation 
in his habits. For privileges so rare and grand, let him not 
stint to pay a great tax. Let him be acsenobite, a pauper, and 
if need be, celibate also. Let him learn to eat his meals stand¬ 
ing, and to relish the taste of fair water and black bread. He 
may leave to others the costly conveniencies of housekeeping, 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


133 


and large hospitality, and the possession of works of art. Let 
him feel that genius is a hospitality, and that he who can 
create works of art needs not collect them. He must live in a 
chamber, and postpone his self-indulgence, forewarned and fore¬ 
armed against that frequent misfortune of men of genius, —- 
the taste for luxury. This is the tragedy of genius, — at¬ 
tempting to drive along the ecliptic with one horse of the 
heavens and one horse of the earth, there is only discord and 
ruin and downfall to chariot and charioteer. 

The duty that every man should assume his own vows, 
should call the institutions of society to account, and examine 
their fitness to him, gains in emphasis, if we look at our modes 
of living. Is our housekeeping sacred and honorable 1 Does 
it raise and inspire us, or does it cripple us instead 1 I ought 
to be armed by every part and function of my household, by 
all my social function, by my economy, by my feasting, by my 
veting, by my traffic. Yet I am almost no party to any of 
these things. Custom does it for me, gives me no power 
therefrom, and runs me in debt to boot. We spend our in¬ 
comes for paint and paper, for a hundred trifles, I know not 
what, and not for the things of a man. Our expense is almost 
all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt ; ’t is 
not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that 
costs so much. Why needs any man be rich 1 Why must he 
have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to 
public houses, and places of amusement h Only for want of 
thought. Give his mind a new image, and he flees into a sol¬ 
itary garden or garret to enjoy it, and is richer with that dream, 
than the fee of a county could make him. But we are first 
thoughtless, and then find that we are moneyless. We are 
first sensual, and then must be rich. We dare not trust our 
wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, and so we buy 
ice-creams. He is accustomed to carpets, and we have not 
sufficient character to put floor-cloths out of his mind whilst he 
stays in the house, and so we pile the floor with carpets. Let 
the house rather be a temple of the Furies of Lacedaemon, 
formidable and holy to all, which none but a Spartan may 
enter or so much as behold. As soon as there is faith, as soon 
as there is society, comfits and cushions will be left to slaves. 
Expense will be inventive and heroic. We shall eat hard and 
lie hard, we shall dwell like the ancient Romans in narrow 
tenements, whilst our public edifices, like theirs, will be worthy, 
for their proportion, of the landscape in which we set them, for 


134 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


conversation, for art, for music, for "worship. We shall be 
rich to great purposes ; poor only for selfish ones. 

Now what help for these evils ? How can the man who has 
learned but one art, procure all the conveniences of life honest¬ 
ly 1 Shall we say all we think 1 — Perhaps with his own hands. 
Suppose he collects or makes them ill; — yet he has learned 
their lesson. If he cannot do that. — Then perhaps he can go 
without. Immense wisdom and riches are in that. It is 
better to go without, than to have them at too great a cost. 
Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, 
humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is grand; when it is 
the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practised for freedom, 
or love, or devotion. Much of the economy which we see in 
houses, is of a base origin, and is best kept out of sight. 
Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl to my 
dinner on Sunday, is a baseness ; but parched corn and a house 
with one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, 
that I may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, 
and girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or 
good-will, is frugality for gods and heroes. 

Can we not learn the lesson of self-help 1 Society is full of 
infirm people, who incessantly summon others to serve them. 
They contrive everywhere to exhaust for their single comfort 
the entire means and appliances of that luxury to which our 
invention has yet attained. Sofas, ottomans, stoves, wine, 
game-fowl, spices, perfumes, rides, the theatre, entertainments, 
— all these they want, they need, and whatever can be sug¬ 
gested more than these, they crave also, as if it was the bread 
which should keep them from starving; and if they miss any 
one, they represent themselves as the most wronged and most 
wretched persons on earth. One must have been born and 
bred with them to know how to prepare a meal for their learned 
stomach. Meantime, they never bestir themselves to serve 
another person ; not they! they have a great deal more to do 
for themselves than they can possibly perform, nor do they 
once perceive the cruel joke of their lives, but the more odious 
they grow, the sharper is the tone of their complaining and 
craving. Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and 
to serve them one’s self, so as to have somewhat left to give, 
instead of being always prompt to grab 1 It is more elegant to 
answer one’s own needs, than to be richly served ; inelegant 
perhaps it may look to-day, and'to a few, but it is an elegance 
forever and to all. 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


135 


I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in reform. I do 
not wish to push my criticism on the state of things around 
me to that extravagant mark, that shall compel me to suicide, 
or to an absolute isolation from the advantages of civil society. 
If we suddenly plant our foot, and say, — I will neither eat 
nor drink nor wear nor touch any food or fabric which I do not 
know to be innocent, or deal with any person whose whole 
manner of life is not clear and rational, we shall stand still. 
Whose is so 1 Not mine ; not thine; not his. But I think we 
must clear ourselves each one by the interrogation, whether 
we have earned our bread to-day by the hearty contribution 
of our energies to the common benefit 1 and we must not cease 
to tend to the correction of these flagrant wrongs, by laying one 
stone aright every day. 

But the idea which now begins to agitate society has a 
wider scope than our daily employments, our households, and 
the institutions of property. We are to revise the whole of 
our social structure, the state, the school, religion, marriage, 
trade, science, and explore their foundations in our own na¬ 
ture ; we are to see that the world not only fitted the former 
men, but fits us, and to clear ourselves of every usage which 
has not its roots in our own mind. What is a man born for 
but to be a Reformer, a Re-maker of what man has made ; a 
renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good, imitating that 
great Nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no mo¬ 
ment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding 
us every morning a new day, and with every pulsation a new 
life 1 Let him renounce everything which is not true to him, 
and put all his practices back on their first • thoughts, and do 
nothing for which he has not the whole world for his reason. 
If there are inconveniences, and what is called ruin in the 
way, because we have so enervated and maimed ourselves, yet 
it would be like dying of perfumes to sink in the effort to 
reattach the deeds of every day to the holy and mysterious 
recesses of life. 

The power, which is at once spring and regulator in all ef¬ 
forts of reform, is the conviction that there is an infinite 
worthiness in man which will appear at the call of worth, and 
that all particular reforms are the removing of some impedi¬ 
ment. Is it not the highest duty that man should be honored 
in us 1 I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad 
lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make 
him feel that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be 


136 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


bought, — neither by comfort, neither by pride, — and though 
I be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he 
is the poor man beside me. And if, at the same time, a wo¬ 
man or a child discovers a sentiment of piety, or a juster 
way of thinking than mine, I ought to confess it by my 
respect and obedience, though it go to alter my whole way 
of life. 

The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith 
and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost 
sight of. We use these words as if they were as obsolete as 
Selah and Amen. And yet they have the broadest meaning, 
and the most cogent application to Boston in 1841. The 
Americans have no faith. They rely on the power of a dollar ; 
they are deaf to a sentiment. They think you may talk the 
north wind down as easily as raise society ; and no class more 
faithless than the scholars or intellectual men. Now if I talk 
with a sincere wise man, and my friend, w r ith a poet, with a 
conscientious youth who is still under the dominion of his 
own wild thoughts, and not yet harnessed in the team of 
society to drag with us all in the ruts of custom, I see at once 
how paltry is all this generation of unbelievers, and what a 
house of cards their institutions are, and I see what one brave 
man, what one great thought executed might effect. I see 
that the reason of the distrust of the practical man in all 
theory, is his inability to perceive the means whereby we work. 
Look, he says, at the tools with which this world of yours is 
to be built. As we cannot make a planet, with atmosphere, 
rivers, and forests, by means of the best carpenters’ or engi¬ 
neers’ tools, with chemist’s laboratory and smith’s forge to boot, 
— so neither can we ever construct that heavenly society you 
prate of, out of foolish, sick, selfish men and women, such as 
we know them to be. But the believer not only beholds his 
heaven to be possible, but already to begin to exist, — not by 
the men or materials the statesman uses, but by men trans¬ 
figured and raised above themselves by the power of principles. 
To principles something else is possible that transcends all the 
power of expedients. 

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the 
world is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of 
the Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small 
and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of 
Rome, is an example. They did they knew not what. The 
naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch for a 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


137 


troop of Roman cavalry. The women fought like men, and 
conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, 
miserably fed. They were Temperance troops. There was 
neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. They conquered 
Asia, and Africa, and Spain, on barley. The Caliph Omar’s 
walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it, than 
another man’s sword. His diet was barley bread; his sauce 
was salt; and oftentimes by way of abstinence he ate his 
bread without salt. His drink was water. His palace was 
built of mud ; and when he left Medina to go to the conquest 
of Jerusalem, he rode on a red camel, with a wooden platter 
hanging at his saddle, with a bottle of water and two sacks, 
one holding barley, and the other dried fruits. 

But there will dawn erelong on our politics, on our modes 
of living, a nobler morning than that Arabian faith, in the 
sentiment of love. This is the one remedy for all ills, the 
panacea of nature. We must be lovers, and at once the im¬ 
possible becomes possible. Our age and history, for these 
thousand years, has not been the history of kindness, but of 
selfishness. Our distrust is very expensive. The money we 
spend for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. We make, 
by distrust, the thief, and burglar, and incendiary, and by our 
court and jail w*e keep him so. An acceptance of the sen¬ 
timent of love throughout Christendom for a season, would 
bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with the 
devotion of his faculties to our service. See this wide society 
of laboring men and women. We allow ourselves to be served 
by them, we live apart from them, and meet them without a 
salute in the streets. We do not greet their talents, nor re¬ 
joice in their good fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in the 
assembly of the people vote for what is dear to them. Thus 
we enact the part of the selfish noble and king from the foun¬ 
dation of the world. See, this tree always bears one fruit. 
In every household, the peace of a pair is poisoned by the 
malice, slyness, indolence, and alienation of domestics. Let 
any two matrons meet, and observe how soon their conversa¬ 
tion turns on the troubles from their “help” as our phrase is. 
In every knot of laborers, the rich man does not feel himself 
among his friends, — and at the polls he finds them arrayed 
in a mass in distinct opposition to him. We complain that 
the politics of masses of the people are controlled by design¬ 
ing men, and led in opposition to manifest justice and the 
common weal, and to their own interest. But the people do 


138 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


not wish to be represented or ruled by the ignorant and base. 
They only vote for these, because they were asked with the 
voice and semblance of kindness. They will not vote for them 
long. They inevitably prefer wit and probity. To use an 
Egyptian metaphor, it is not their will for any long time “ to 
raise the nails of wild beasts, and to depress the heads of the 
sacred birds.” Let our affection flow out to our fellows; it 
would operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions. It is 
better to work on institutions by the sun than by the wind. 
The state must consider the poor man, and all voices must 
speak for him. Every child that is born must have a just 
chance for his bread. Let the amelioration in our laws of 
property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the 
grasping of the poor. Let us begin by habitual imparting. 
Let us understand that the equitable rule is, that no one 
should take more than his share, let him be ever so rich. Let 
me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see to it that the 
world is the better for me, and to find my reward in the act. 
Love would put a new face on this weary old world in which 
we dwell as pagans and enemies too long, and it would warm 
the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, 
the impotence of armies, and navies, and lines of defence, 
would be superseded by this unarmed child. Love will creep 
where it cannot go, will accomplish that by imperceptible 
methods,—being its own lever, fulcrum, and power, — which 
force could never achieve. Have you not seen in the woods, 
in a late autumn morning, a poor fungus or mushroom, — a 
plant without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a 
soft mush or jelly,—by its constant, total, and inconceivably 
gentle pushing, manage to break its way up through the frosty 
ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on its head 1 It is 
the symbol of the power of kindness. The virtue of this 
principle in human society in application to great interests is 
obsolete and forgotten. Once or twice in history it has been 
tried in illustrious instances, with signal success. This great, 
overgrown, dead Christendom of ours still keeps alive at least 
the name of a lover of mankind. But one day all men will 
be lovers ; and every calamity will be dissolved in the univer¬ 
sal sunshine. 

Will you suffer me to add one trait more to this portrait of 
man the reformer 1 The mediator between the spiritual and 
the actual world should have a great prospective prudence. 
An Arabian poet describes his hero by saying, 


MAN THE REFORMER. 


139 


“ Sunshine was he 
In the winter day; 

And in the midsummer 
Coolness and shade.” 

He who would help himself and others, should not be a sub¬ 
ject of irregular and interrupted impulses of virtue, but a 
continent, persisting, immovable person, — such as we have 
seen a few scattered up and down in time for the blessing of 
the world ; men who have in the gravity of their nature a 
quality which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which distrib¬ 
utes the motion equably over all the wheels, and hinders it 
from falling unequally and suddenly in destructive shocks. It 
is better that joy should be spread over all the day in the form 
of strength, than that it should be concentrated into ecstasies, 
full of danger and followed by reactions. There is a sublime 
prudence, which is the very highest that we know of man, 
which, believing in a vast future, — sure of more to come 
than is yet seen, — postpones always the present hour to the 
whole life; postpones talent to genius, and special results to 
character. As the merchant gladly takes money from his in¬ 
come to add to his capital, so is the great man willing to lose 
particular powers and talents, so that he gain in the elevation 
of his life. The opening of the spiritual senses disposes men 
ever to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents, their 
means and skill of procuring a present success, their power 
and their fame, — to cast all things behind, in the insatiable 
thirst for divine communications. A purer fame, a greater 
power rewards the sacrifice. It is the conversion of our har¬ 
vest into seed. As the farmer casts into the ground the finest 
ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold 
nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now 
possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to 
sow the sun and the moon for seeds. 






LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

Read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, December 2, 1841 












. 









LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


T HE Times, as we say, — or the present aspects of our 
social state, the Laws, Divinity, Natural Science, Agri¬ 
culture, Art, Trade, Letters, — have their root in an invisible 
spiritual reality. To appear in these aspects, they must first 
exist, or have some necessary foundation. Beside all the small 
reasons we assign, there is a great reason for the existence of 
every extant fact; a reason which lies grand and immovable, 
often unsuspected behind it in silence. The Times are the 
masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of 
noble and majestic agents to the wise ; the receptacle in 
which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which 
the genius of to-day is building up the Future. The Times, 
— the nations, manners, institutions, opinions, votes, are to 
be studied as omens, as sacred leaves, whereon a weighty 
sense is inscribed, if he have the wit and the love to search it 
out. Nature itself seems to propound to us this topic, and to 
invite us to explore the meaning of the conspicuous facts of 
the day. Everything that is popular, it has been said, de¬ 
serves the attention of the philosopher: and this for the ob¬ 
vious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, 
yet it characterizes the people. 

Here is very good matter to be handled, if we are skilful; an 
abundance of important practical questions which it behooves 
us to understand. Let us examine the pretensions of the at¬ 
tacking and defending parties. Here is this great fact of Con¬ 
servatism, intrenched in its immense redoubts, with Himma- 
leh for its front, and Atlas for its flank, and Andes for its rear, 
and the Atlantic and Pacific seas for its ditches and trenches, 
which has planted its crosses, and crescents, and stars and 
stripes, and various signs and badges of possession, over every 
rood of the planet, and says : ‘ I will hold fast; and to whom 



144 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


I will, will I give ; and whom I will, will I exclude and starve ’: 
so says Conservatism; and all the children of men attack the 
colossus in their youth, and all, or all but a few, bow before 
it when they are old. A necessity not yet commanded, a neg¬ 
ative imposed on the will of man by his condition, a deficiency 
in his force, is the foundation on which it rests. Let this side 
be fairly stated. Meantime, on the other part, arises Reform, 
and offers the sentiment of Love as an overmatch to this ma¬ 
terial might. I wish to consider well this affirmative side, 
which has a loftier port and reason than heretofore, which en¬ 
croaches on the other every day, puts it out of countenance, 
out of reason, and out of temper, and leaves it nothing but 
silence and possession. 

The fact of aristocracy, with its two weapons of wealth and 
manners, is as commanding a feature of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, and the American republic, as of old Rome or modern 
England. The reason and influence of wealth, the aspect of 
philosophy and religion, and the tendencies which have acquired 
the name of Transcendentalism in Old and New England ; the 
aspect of poetry, as the exponent and interpretation of these 
things; the fuller development and the freer play of Character 
as a social and political agent; — these and other related 
topics will in turn come to be considered. 

But the subject of the Times is not an abstract question. 
We talk of the world, but we mean a few men and women. 
If you speak of the age, you mean your own platoon of people, 
as Milton and Dante painted in colossal their platoons, and 
called them Heaven and Hell. In our idea of progress, we do 
not go out of this personal picture. We do not think the sky 
will be bluer, or honey sweeter, or our climate more temperate, 
but only that our relation to our fellows will be simpler and 
happier. What is the reason to be given for this extreme at¬ 
traction which persons have for us, but that they are the Age 1 
they are the results of the Past; they are the heralds of- the 
Future. They indicate — these witty, suffering, blushing, in¬ 
timidating figures of the only race in which there are individ¬ 
uals or changes — how far on the Fate has gone, and what it 
drives at. As trees make scenery, and constitute the hospi¬ 
tality of the landscape, so persons are the world to persons. 
A cunning mystery by which the Great Desert of thoughts 
and of planets takes this engaging form, to bring, as it would 
seem, its meanings nearer to the mind. Thoughts walk and 
speak, and look with eyes at me, and transport me into new 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


145 


and magnificent scenes. These are the pungent instructors 
who thrill the heart of each of us, and make all other teaching 
formal and cold. How I follow them with aching heart, with 
pining desire ! I count myself nothing before them. I would 
die for them with joy. They can do what they will with me. 
How they lash us with those tongues ! How they make the 
tears start, make us blush and turn pale, and lap us in Elysium 
to soothing dreams, and castles in the air ! By tones of tri¬ 
umph ; of dear love ; by threats ; by pride that freezes ; these 
have the skill to make the world look bleak and inhospitable, 
or seem the nest of tenderness and joy. I do not wonder at 
the miracles which poetry attributes to the music of Orpheus, 
when I remember what I have experienced from the varied 
notes of the human voice. They are an incalculable energy 
wdiich countervails all other forces in nature, because they are 
the channel of supernatural powers. There is no interest or 
institution so poor and withered, but if a new strong man 
could be born into it, he would immediately redeem and re¬ 
place it. A personal ascendency, — that is the only fact much 
worth considering. I remember, some years ago, somebody 
shocked a circle of friends of order here in Boston, who sup¬ 
posed that our people were identified with their religious de¬ 
nominations, by declaring that an eloquent man-—let him be 
of what sect soever — would be ordained at once in one of our 
metropolitan churches. To be sure he would ; and not only 
in ours, but in any church, mosque, or temple, on the planet; 
but he must be eloquent, able to supplant our method and 
classification, by the superior beauty of his own. Every fact 
we have w’as brought here by some person \ and there is none 
that will not change and pass away before a person, whose 
nature is broader than the person whom the fact in question 
represents. And so I find the Age walking about in happy and 
hopeful natures, in strong eyes and pleasant thoughts, and 
think I read it nearer and truer so, than in the statute-book, 
or in the investments of capital, which rather celebrate with 
mournful music the obsequies of the last age. In the brain of 
a fanatic; in the wild hope of a mountain boy, called by city 
boys very ignorant, because they do not know what his hope 
has certainly apprised him shall be; in the love-glance of a 
girl; in the hair-splitting conscientiousness of some eccentric 
person, who has found some new scruple to embarrass himself 
and his neighbors withal; is to be found that which shall con¬ 
stitute the times to come, more than in the now organized and 
7 J 


VOL. 


146 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


accredited oracles. For, whatever is affirmative and now ad¬ 
vancing, contains it. I think that only is real, which men love 
and rejoice in ; not what they tolerate, but what they choose ; 
what they embrace and avow, and not the things which chill, 
benumb, and terrify them. 

And so why not draw for these times a portrait-gallery ] Let 
us paint the painters. Whilst the Daguerreotypist, with 
camera-obscura and silver plate, begins now to traverse the 
land, let us set up our Camera also, and let the sun paint the 
people. Let us paint the agitator, and the man of the old 
school, and the member of Congress, and the college professor, 
the formidable editor, the priest, and reformer, the contem¬ 
plative girl, and the fair aspirant for fashion and opportunities, 
the woman of the world who has tried and knows ; — let us 
examine how well she knows. Could we indicate the indica¬ 
tors, indicate those who most accurately represent every good 
and evil tendency of the general mind, in the just order which 
they take on this canvas of Time; so that all witnesses 
should recognize a spiritual law, as each well-known form flit¬ 
ted for a moment across the wall, we should have a series of 
sketches which would report to the next ages the color and 
quality of ours. 

Certainly, I think, if this were done, there would be much 
to admire as well as to condemn ; souls of as lofty a port, as 
any in Greek or Roman fame, might appear ; men of great 
heart, of strong hand, and of persuasive speech ; subtle think¬ 
ers, and men of wide sympathy, and an apprehension which 
looks over all history, and everywhere recognizes its own. To 
be sure, there will be fragments and hints of men, more than 
enough : bloated promises, which end in nothing or little. 
And then, truly great men, but with some defect in their com¬ 
position, which neutralizes their whole force. Here is a gen¬ 
eral without a command, a Damascus blade, such as you may 
search through nature in vain to parallel, laid up on the shelf 
in some village to rust and ruin. And how many seem not 
quite available for that idea which they represent ! Now and 
then comes a bolder spirit, I should rather say, a more surren¬ 
dered soul, more informed and led by God, which is much in 
advance of the rest, quite beyond their sympathy, but predicts 
what shall soon be the general fulness; as when we stand by 
the sea-shore, whilst the tide is coming in, a wave comes up the 
beach far higher than any foregoing one, and recedes; and for 
a long while none comes up to that mark ; but after some time 
the whole sea is there and beyond it. 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


147 


But we are not permitted to stand as spectators of the pa¬ 
geant which the times exhibit : we are parties also, and have 
a responsibility which is not to be declined. A little while 
this interval of wonder and comparison is permitted us, but to 
the end that we shall play a manly part. As the solar system 
moves forward in the heavens, certain stars open before us, 
and certain stars close up behind us; so is man’s life. The 
reputations that were great and inaccessible change and tar¬ 
nish. How great were once Lord Bacon’s dimensions ! he is 
now reduced almost to the middle height; ai«id many another 
star has turned out to be a planet or an asteroid : only a few 
are the fixed stars which have no parallax, or none for us. 
The change and decline of old reputations are the gracious 
marks of our own growth. Slowly, like light of morning, 
it steals on us, the new fact, that we, who were pupils or as¬ 
pirants, are now society : do compose a portion of that head 
and heart we are wont to think worthy of all reverence and 
heed. We are the representatives of religion and intellect, 
and stand in the light of Ideas, whose rays stream through us 
to those younger and more in the dark. What further rela¬ 
tions we sustain, what new lodges we are entering, is now un¬ 
known. To-day is a king in disguise. To-day always looks 
mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an uniform experience, 
that all good and great and happy actions are made up pre¬ 
cisely of these blank to-days. Let us not be so deceived. Let 
us unmask the king as he passes. Let us not inhabit times 
of wonderful and various promise without divining their ten¬ 
dency. Let us not see the foundations of nations, and of a 
new and better order of things laid, with roving eyes, and an 
attention preoccupied with trifles. 

The two omnipresent parties of History, the party of the 
Past and the party of the Future, divide society to-day as of 
old. Here is the innumerable multitude of those who accept 
the state and the church from the last generation, and stand 
on no argument but possession. They have reason also, and, 
as I think, better reason than is commonly stated. No Burke, 
no Metternich, has yet done full justice to the side of con¬ 
servatism. But this class, however large, relying not on the 
intellect but on instinct, blends itself with the brute forces 
of nature, is respectable only as nature is, but the individuals 
have no attraction for us. It is the dissenter, the theorist, 
the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark 
on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then 


148 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find 
that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the 
actors and the students. 

The actors constitute that great army of martyrs who, at 
least in America, by their conscience and philanthropy, occupy 
the ground which Calvinism occupied in the last age, and 
compose the visible church of the existing generation. The 
present age will be marked by its harvest of projects for the 
reform of domestic, civil, literary, and ecclesiastical institu¬ 
tions. The leaders of the crusades against War, Negro 
slavery, Intemperance, Government based on force, Usages of 
trade, Court and Custom-house Oaths, and so on to the 
agitators on the system of Education and the laws of Property, 
are the right successors of Luther, Knox, Robinson, Fox, 
Penn, Wesley, and Whitfield. They have the same virtues 
and vices ; the same noble impulse, and the same bigotry. 
These movements are on all accounts important; they not 
only check the special abuses, but they educate the conscience 
and the intellect of the people. How can such a question as 
the Slave-trade be agitated for forty years by all the Christian 
nations, without throwing great light on ethics into the 
general mind 1 The fury, with which the slave-trader defends 
every inch of his bloody deck, and his howling auction-platform, 
is a trumpet to alarm the ear of mankind, to wake the dull, 
and drive all neutrals to take sides, and to listen to the 
argument and the verdict. The Temperance question, which 
rides the conversation of ten thousand circles, and is tacitly 
recalled at every public and at every private table, drawing 
"with it all the curious ethics of the Pledge, of the Wine- 
question, of the equity of the manufacture and the trade, is a 
gymnastic training to the casuistry and conscience of the time. 
Anti-masonry had a deep right and wrong, which gradually 
emerged to sight out of the turbid controversy. The polit¬ 
ical questions touching the Banks ; the Tariff; the limits of 
the executive power; the right of the constituent to instruct 
the representative; the treatment of the Indians; the 
Boundary wars ; the Congress of nations; are all pregnant 
with ethical conclusions ; and it is well if government and our 
social order can extricate themselves from these alembics, and 
find themselves still government and social order. The stu¬ 
dent of history will hereafter compute the singular value of 
our endless discussion of questions, to the mind of the period. 

Whilst each of these aspirations and attempts of the people 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


149 


for the Better is magnified by the natural exaggeration of its 
advocates, until it excludes the others from sight, and repels 
discreet persons by the unfairness of the plea, the movements 
are in reality all parts of one movement. There is a per¬ 
fect chain — see it, or see it not — of reforms emerging from 
the surrounding darkness, each cherishing some part of the 
general idea, and all must be seen, in order to do justice to 
any one. Seen in this their natural connection, they are 
sublime. The conscience of the Age demonstrates itself in 
this effort to raise the life of man by putting it in harmony 
with his idea of the Beautiful and the Just. The history of 
reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea 
with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our 
imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign 
our daily employments. They appear to us unfit, unworthy 
of the faculties we spend on them. In conversation with a 
wise man, we find ourselves apologizing for our employments ; 
we speak of them with shame. Nature, literature, science, 
childhood, appear to us beautiful; but not our own daily work, 
not the ripe fruit and considered labors of man. This beauty 
which the fancy finds in everything else, certainly accuses that 
manner of life we lead. Why should it be hateful 1 Why 
should it contrast thus with all natural beauty 1 Why should 
it not be poetic, and invite and raise us 1 Is there a necessity 
that the works of man should be sordid 1 Perhaps not. — Out 
of this fair Idea in the mind springs the effort at the Perfect. 
It is the interior testimony to a fairer possibility of life and 
manners, which agitates society every day with the offer of 
some new amendment. If we would make more strict inquiry 
concerning its origin, we find ourselves rapidly approaching 
the inner boundaries of thought, that term where speech 
becomes silence, and science conscience. For the origin of all 
reform is in that mysterious fountain of the moral sentiment 
in man, wdiich amidst the natural, ever contains the super¬ 
natural for men. That is new and creative. That is alive. 
That alone can make a man other than he is. Here or 
nowhere resides unbounded energy, unbounded power. 

The new voices in the wilderness crying “ Repent,” have 
revived a hope, which had wellnigh perished out of the world, 
that the thoughts of the mind may yet, in some distant age, 
in some happy hour, be executed by the hands. That is the 
hope, of which all other hopes are parts. For some ages these 
ideas have been consigned to the poet and musical composer, 


150 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


to the prayers and the sermons of churches; but the thought, 
that they can ever have any footing in real life, seems long since 
to have been exploded by all judicious persons. Milton, in his 
best tract, describes a relation between religion and the daily 
occupations, which is true until this time. 

“A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, 
finds religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many 
piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep 
a stock going upon that trade. What should he do? Fain 
he would have the name to be religious; fain he would bear 
up with his neighbors in that. What does he, therefore, but 
resolve to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, 
to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing 
of his religious affairs; some divine of note and estimation 
that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the whole ware¬ 
house of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into his cus¬ 
tody ; and indeed makes the very person of that man his re¬ 
ligion ; esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence 
and commendatory of his own piety. So that a man may say, 
his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a 
dividual movable, and goes and comes near him, according as 
that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives 
him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at 
night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep, 
rises, is saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced 
beverage, and better breakfasted than he whose morning appe¬ 
tite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and 
Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his 
kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his re¬ 
ligion.” 

This picture would serve for our times. Religion was not 
invited to eat or drink or sleep with us, or to make or divide 
an estate, but was a holiday guest. Such omissions judge the 
church ; as the compromise made with the slaveholder, not 
much noticed at first, every day appears more flagrant mischief 
to the American constitution. But now the purists are looking 
into all these matters. The more intelligent are growing uneasy 
on the subject of Marriage. They wish to see the character 
represented also in that covenant. There shall be nothing 
brutal in it, but it shall honor the man and the woman as 
much as the most diffusive and universal action. Grimly the 
same spirit looks into the law of Property, and accuses men 
of driving a trade in the great boundless providence which had 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


151 


given the air, the water, and the land to men, to use and not 
to fence in and monopolize. It casts its eyes on Trade, and 
Day Labor, and so it goes up and down, paving the earth with 
eyes, destroying privacy, and making thorough lights. Is all 
this for nothing 1 Do you suppose that the reforms, which are 
preparing, will be as superficial as those we know'? 

By the books it reads and translates, judge what books it 
will presently print. A great deal of the profoundest thinking 
of antiquity, which had become as good as obsolete for us, is 
now reappearing in extracts and allusions, and in twenty years 
will get all printed anew. See how daring is the reading, the 
speculation, the experimenting of the time. If now some 
genius shall arise who could unite these scattered rays ! And 
always such a genius does embody the ideas of each time. 
Here is great variety and richness of mysticism, each part of 
which now only disgusts, whilst it forms the sole thought of 
some poor Perfectionist or “ Comer out,” yet, when it shall be 
taken up as the garniture of some profound and all-reconciling 
thinker, will appear the rich and apjuropriate decoration of his 
robes. 

These reforms are our contemporaries ; they are ourselves; 
our own light, and sight, and conscience ; they only name the 
relation which subsists between us and the vicious institutions 
which they go to rectify. They are the simplest statements 
of man in these matters ; the plain right and wrong. I can¬ 
not choose but allow and honor them. The impulse is good, 
and the theory; the practice is less beautiful. The Reform¬ 
ers affirm the inward life, but they do not trust it, but use 
outward and vulgar means. They do not rely on precisely 
that strength which wins me to their cause ; not on love, not 
on a principle, but on men, on multitudes, on circumstances, on 
money, on party; that is, on fear, on wrath, and pride. . The 
love which lifted men to the sight of these better ends, was 
the true and best distinction of this time, the disposition to 
trust a principle more than a material force. I think that the 
soul of reform ; the conviction, that not sensualism, not slav¬ 
ery, not war, not imprisonment, not even government, are 
needed, — but in lieu of them all, reliance on the sentiment 
of man, which will work best the more it is trusted ; not reli¬ 
ance on numbers, but, contrariwise, distrust of numbers, and 
the feeling that then are we strongest, when most private and 
alone. The young men, who have been vexing society for 
these last years with regenerative methods, seem to have made 


152 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


this mistake; they all exaggerated some special means, and 
all failed to see that the Reform of Reforms must be accom¬ 
plished without means. 

The Reforms have their high origin in an ideal justice, but 
they do not retain the purity of an idea. They are-quickly 
organized in some low, inadequate form, and present no more 
poetic image to the mind, than the evil tradition which they 
reprobated. They mix the fire of the moral sentiment with 
personal and party heats, with measureless exaggerations, and 
the blindness that prefers some darling measure to justice 
and truth. Those who are urging with most ardor what are 
called the greatest benefits of mankind, are narrow, self-pleas¬ 
ing, conceited men, and affect us as the insane do. They bite 
us, and we run mad also. I think the work of the reformer 
as innocent as other work that is done around him; but when 
I have seen it near, I do not like it better. It is done in the 
same way, it is done profanely,.not piously; by management, 
by tactics, and clamor. It is a buzz in the ear. I cannot 
feel any pleasure in sacrifices which display to me such par¬ 
tiality of character. We do not want actions, but men ; not a 
chemical drop of water, but rain ; the spirit that sheds and 
showers actions, countless, endless actions. You have on some 
occasion played a bold part. You have set your heart and 
face against society, when you thought it wrong, and returned 
it frown for frown. Excellent : now can you afford to forget 
it, reckoning all your action no more than the passing of your 
hand through the air, or a little breath of your mouth 1 The 
world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man 
no mark in the vast idea. To the youth diffident of his abili¬ 
ty, and full of compunction at his unprofitable existence, the 
temptation is always great to lend himself to public move¬ 
ments, and as one of a party accomplish what he cannot hope 
to effect alone. But he must resist the degradation of a man 
to a measure. I must act with truth, though I should never 
come to act, as you call it, with effect. I must consent to in¬ 
action. A patience which is grand ; a brave and cold neglect 
of the offices which prudence exacts, so it be done in a deep 
piety ; a consent to solitude and inaction, which proceeds out 
of an unwillingness to violate character, is the century which 
makes the gem. Whilst therefore I desire to express the re¬ 
spect and joy I feel before this sublime connection of reforms, 
now in their infancy around us, I urge the more earnestly the 
paramount duties of self-reliance. I cannot find language of 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


153 


sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of pri¬ 
vate integrity. All men, all things, the state, the church, yea 
the friends of the heart, are phantasms and unreal beside the 
sanctuary of the heart. With so much awe, with so much 
fear, let it be respected. 

The great majority of men, unable to judge of any principle 
until its light falls on a fact, are not aware of the evil that is 
around them, until they see it in some gross form, as in a 
class of intemperate men, or slaveholders, or soldiers, or fraud¬ 
ulent persons. Then they are greatly moved ; and magnify¬ 
ing the importance of that wrong, they fancy that if that 
abuse were redressed, all would go well, and they fill the land 
with clamor to correct it. Hence the missionary and other re¬ 
ligious efforts. If every island and every house had a Bible, 
if every child was brought into the Sunday school, would the 
wounds of the world heal, and man be upright 1 

But the man of ideas, accounting the circumstance nothing, 
judges of the commonwealth from the state of his own mind. 

‘ If/ he says, ‘ I am selfish, then is there slavery, or the effort 
to establish it, wherever I go. But if I am just, then is there no 
slavery, let the laws say what they will. For if I treat all men 
as gods, how to me can there be any such thing as a slave!’ 
But how frivolous is your war against circumstances. This 
denouncing philanthropist is himself a slaveholder in every 
word and look. Does he free me 1 Does he cheer me! He 
is the State of Georgia, or Alabama, with their sanguinary 
slave-laws walking here on our Northeastern shores. We are all 
thankful he has no more political power, as we are fond of 
liberty ourselves. I am afraid our virtue is a little geograph¬ 
ical. I am not mortified by our vice; that is obduracy; it 
colors and palters, it curses and swears, and I can see to the 
end of it; but, I own, our virtue makes me ashamed ; so sour 
and narrow, so thin and blind, virtue so vice-like. Then again, 
how trivial seem the contests of the abolitionists, whilst he 
aims merely at the circumstance of the slave. Give the slave 
the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is no slave : 
you are the slave : he not only in his humility feels his supe¬ 
riority, feels that much-deplored condition of his to be a fading 
trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master. The 
exaggeration, which our young people make of his wrongs, 
characterizes themselves. What are no trifles to them, they 
naturally think are no trifles to Pompey. 

We say, then, that the reforming movement is sacred in its 
7* 


154 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


origin; in its management and details timid and profane. 
These benefactors hope to raise man by improving his circum¬ 
stances : by combination of that which is dead, they hope to 
make something alive. In vain. By new infusions alone of 
the spirit by which he is made and directed, can he be re-made 
and reinforced. The sad Pestalozzi, who shared with all ardent 
spirits the hope of Europe on the outbreak of the French Rev¬ 
olution, after witnessing its sequel, recorded his conviction, 
that “ the amelioration of outward circumstances will be the 
effect, but can never be the means of mental and moral im¬ 
provement.” Quitting now the class of actors, let us turn to 
see how it stands with the other class of which we spoke, 
namely, the students. 

A new disease has fallen on the life of man. Every Age, 
like every human body, has its ow r n distemper. Other times 
have had w 7 ar, or famine, or a barbarism domestic or bordering, 
as their antagonism. Our forefathers walked in the world and 
went to their graves, tormented w T ith the fear of Sin, and the 
terror of the Day of Judgment. These terrors have lost their 
force, and our torment is Unbelief, the Uncertainty as to what 
we ought to do; the distrust of the value of w hat we do, and 
the distrust that the Necessity (which we all at last believe 
in) is fair and beneficent. Our Religion assumes the negative 
form of rejection. Out of love of the true, we repudiate the 
false: and the Religion is an abolishing criticism. A great 
perplexity hangs like a cloud on the brow 7 of all cultivated 
persons, a certain imbecility in the best spirits, which distin¬ 
guishes the period. We do not find the same trait in the 
Arabian, in the Hebrew, in Greek, Roman, Norman, English 
periods ; no, but in other men a natural firmness. The men 
did nor see beyond the need of the hour. They planted their 
foot strong, and doubted nothing. We mistrust every step w r e 
take. We find it the worst thing about time, that w r e know 
not what to do with it. We are so sharp-sighted that w’e can 
neither w r ork nor think, neither read Plato nor not read him. 

Then there is what is called a too intellectual tendency. 
Can there be too much intellect 1 We have never met w r ith 
any such excess. But the criticism, which is levelled at the 
lawrs and manners, ends in thought, without causing a new 
method of life. The genius of the day does not decline to a 
deed, but to a beholding. It is not that men do not wdsh to 
act; they pine to be employed, but are paralyzed by the un¬ 
certainty what they should do. The inadequacy of the work 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


155 


to the faculties is the painful perception which keeps them 
still. This happens to the best. Then, talents bring their 
usual temptations, and the current literature and poetry with 
perverse ingenuity draw us away from life to solitude and 
meditation. This could well be borne, if it were great and 
involuntary ; if the men were ravished by their thought, and 
hurried into ascetic extravagances. Society could then man¬ 
age to release their shoulder from its wheel, and grant them 
for a time this privilege of sabbath. But they are not so. 
Thinking, which was a rage, is become an art. The thinker 
gives me results, and never invites me to be present with him 
at his invocation of truth, and to enjoy with him its proceed¬ 
ing into his mind. 

So little action amidst such audacious and yet sincere pro¬ 
fession, that we begin to doubt if that great revolution in the 
art of war, which has made it a game of posts instead of a game 
of battles, has not operated on Reform ; whether this be not 
also a war of posts, a paper blockade, in which each party is to 
display the utmost resources of his spirit and belief, and no 
conflict occur; but the world shall take that course which the 
demonstration of the truth shall indicate. 

But we must pay for being too intellectual, as they call it. 
People are not as light-hearted for it. I think men never 
loved life less. I question if care and doubt ever wrote their 
names so legibly on the faces of any population. This Ennui , 
for which we Saxons had no name, this word of France has got 
a terrific significance. It shortens life, and bereaves the day 
of its light. Old age begins in the nursery, and before the 
young American is put into jacket and trousers, he says, ‘ I 
want something which I never saw before’; and ‘I wish I was 
not I.’ I have seen the same gloom on the brow even of those 
adventurers from the intellectual class, who had dived deepest 
and with most success into active life. I have seen the authen¬ 
tic sign of anxiety and perplexity on the greatest forehead of the 
state. The canker-worms have crawled to the topmost bough 
of the wild elm, and swing down from that. Is there less oxy¬ 
gen in the atmosphere h What has checked in this age the ani¬ 
mal spirits which gave to our forefathers their bounding pulse ? 

But have a little patience with this melancholy humor. 
Their unbelief arises out of a greater Belief; their inaction out 
of a scorn of inadequate action. By the side of these men, the 
hot agitators have a certain cheap and ridiculous air; they 
even look smaller than the others. Of the two, I own, I like 


156 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


the speculators best. They have some piety which looks with 
faith to a fair Future, unprofaned by rash and unequal at¬ 
tempts to realize it. And truly we shall find much to console 
us, when we consider the cause of their uneasiness. It is the 
love of greatness, it is the need of harmony, the contrast of 
the dwarfish Actual with the exorbitant Idea. No man can 
compare the ideas and aspirations of the innovators of the 
present day, with those of former periods, without feeling how 
great and high this criticism is. The revolutions that impend 
over society are not now from ambition and rapacity, from im¬ 
patience of one or another form of government, but from new 
modes of thinking, which shall recompose society after a new 
order, which shall animate labor by love and science, which 
shall destroy the value of many kinds of property, and replace 
all property within the dominion of reason and equity. There 
was never so great a thought laboring in the breasts of men, 
as now. It almost seems as if what was aforetime spoken fab¬ 
ulously and hieroglyph ically, was now spoken plainly, the doc¬ 
trine, namely, of the indwelling of the Creator in man. The 
spiritualist wishes this only, that the spiritual principle should 
be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible ap¬ 
plications to the state of man, without the admission of any¬ 
thing unspiritual, that is, anything positive, dogmatic, or per¬ 
sonal. The excellence of this class consists in this, that they 
have believed ; that, affirming the need of new and higher 
modes of living and action, they have abstained from the rec¬ 
ommendation of low methods. Their fault is that they have 
stopped at the intellectual perception ; that their will is not 
yet inspired from the Fountain of Love. But wdiose fault is 
this? and what a fault, and to what inquiry does it lead ! We 
have come to that which is the spring of all power, of beauty 
and virtue, of art and poetry ; and who shall tell us according 
to what law its inspirations and its informations are given or 
withholden ? 

I do not wish to be guilty of the narrowness and pedantry 
of inferring the tendency and genius of the Age from a few and 
insufficient facts or persons. Every age has a thousand sides 
and signs and tendencies ; and it is only when surveyed from 
inferior points of view, that great varieties of character appear. 
Our time too is full of activity and performance. Is there not 
something comprehensive in the grasp of a society which to 
great mechanical invention, and the best institutions of prop¬ 
erty, adds the most daring theories; which explores the 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 157 

subtlest and most universal problems 1 At the manifest risk 
of repeating what every other Age has thought of itself, we 
might say, we think the Genius of this Age more philosophical 
than any other has been, righter in its aims, truer, with less 
fear, less fable, less mixture of any sort. 

But turn it how we will, as w T e ponder this meaning of the 
times, every new thought drives us to the deep fact, that the 
Time is the child of the Eternity. The main interest which 
any aspects of the Times can have for us, is the great spirit 
which gazes through them, the light which they can shed on 
the wonderful questions, What we are 1 and Whither we 
tend 1 We do not wish to be deceived. Here we drift, like 
white sail across the wild ocean, now bright on the wave, now 
darkling in the trough of the sea; but from what port did we 
sail 1 Who knows 1 Or to what port are we bound 1 Who 
knows ! There is no one to tell us but such poor weather- 
- tossed mariners as ourselves, whom we speak as w’e pass, or 
who have hoisted some signal, or floated to us some letter in 
a bottle from far. But what know they more than we 1 They 
also found themselves on this wondrous sea. No; from the 
older sailors, nothing. Over all their speaking-trumpets, the 
gray sea and the loud winds answer, Not in us; not in Time. 
Where then but in Ourselves, where but in' that Thought 
through which w T e communicate with absolute nature, and are 
made aware that whilst we shed the dust of which we are 
built, grain by grain, till it is all gone, the law which clothes 
us with humanity remains new h where, but in the intuitions 
which are vouchsafed us from within, shall we learn the 
Truth! Faithless, faithless, we fancy that with the dust we 
depart and are not; and do not know that the law and the 
perception of the law are at last one; that only as much as 
the law enters us, becomes us, we are living men, — imiflortal 
with the immortality of this law. Underneath all these ap¬ 
pearances, lies that which is, that which lives, that which 
causes. This ever renewing generation of appearances rests 
on a reality, and a reality that is alive. 

To a true scholar the attraction of the aspects of nature, the 
departments of life, and the passages of his experience, is 
simply the information they yield him of this supreme nature 
which lurks within all. That reality, that causing force is 
moral. The Moral Sentiment is but its other name. It 
makes by its presence or absence right and wrong, beauty and 
ugliness, genius or deprivation. As the granite comes to the 


158 


LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 


surface, and towers into the highest mountains, and, if we dig 
down, we find it below the superficial strata, so in all the de¬ 
tails of our domestic or civil life is hidden the elemental re¬ 
ality, which ever and anon comes to the surface, and forms the 
grand men, who are the leaders and examples, rather than the 
companions of the race. The granite is curiously concealed 
under a thousand formations and surfaces, under fertile soils, 
and grasses, and flowers, under well-manured, arable fields, 
and large towns and cities, but it makes the foundation of 
these, and is always indicating its presence by slight but sure 
signs. So is it with the Life of our life ; so close does that 
also hide. I read it in glad and in weeping eyes ; I read it in 
the pride and in the humility of people ; it is recognized in 
every bargain and in every complaisance, in every criticism, 
and in all praise ; it is voted for at elections; it wins the 
cause with juries ; it rides the stormy eloquence of the senate, 
sole victor ; histories are written of it, holidays decreed to it; 
statues, tombs, churches, built to its honor; yet men seem to 
fear and to shun it, w r hen it comes barely to view in our im¬ 
mediate neighborhood. 

For that reality let us stand : that let us serve, and for that 
speak. Only as far as that shines through them, are these 
times or any times worth consideration. I wish to speak of 
the politics, education, business, and religion around us, with¬ 
out ceremony or false deference. You will absolve me from 
the charge of flippancy, or malignity, or the desire to say smart 
things at the expense of whomsoever, when you see that reali¬ 
ty is all we prize, and that we are bound on our entrance Into 
nature to speak for that. Let it not be recorded in our own 
memories, that in this moment of the Eternity, when we who 
were named by our names, flitted across the light, we were 
afraid of any fact, or disgraced the fair Day by a pusillani¬ 
mous preference of our bread to our freedom. What is the 
scholar, what is the man for but for hospitality to every new 
thought of his time 1 Have you leisure, power, property, 
* friends 1 you shall be the asylum and patron of every new 
thought, every unproven opinion, every untried project, which 
proceeds out of good-will and honest seeking. All the news¬ 
papers, all the tongues of to-day will of course at first defame 
what is noble ; but you who hold not of to-day, not of the 
times, but of the Everlasting, are to stand for it; and the 
highest compliment man ever receives from Heaven, is the 
sending to him its disguised and discredited angels. 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


A Lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple, Boston 
December 9, 1841. 





































THE CONSERVATIVE. 


T HE two parties which divide the state, the party of Con¬ 
servatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and 
have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was 
made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The con¬ 
servative party established the reverend hierarchies and mon¬ 
archies of the most ancient world. The battle of patrician 
and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and 
accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reap¬ 
pears in all countries and times. The w r ar rages not only in 
battle-fields, in national councils, and ecclesiastical synods, but 
agitates every man’s bosom w'ith opposing advantages every 
hour. On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now 
the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if 
for the first time, under new names and hot personalities. 

Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must have a 
correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution. It is 
the opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of 
he Understanding and the Reason. It is the primal antago¬ 
nism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature. 

There is a fragment of old fable which seems somehow, to 
have been dropped from the current mythologies, which may 
deserve attention, as it appears to relate to this subject. 

Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with none but the 
great Uranus or Heaven beholding him, and he created an 
oyster. Then he would act again, but he made nothing more, 
but went on creating the race of oysters. Then Uranus cried, 
1 A new work, 0 Saturn ! the old is not good again.’ 

Saturn replied. 4 I fear. There is not only the alternative 
of making and not making, but also of unmaking. Seest thou 
the great sea, how it ebbs and flows 'l so is it with me ; my 
power ebbs; and if I put forth my hands, I shall not do, but 

K 



162 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


undo. Therefore I do what I have done; I hold what I have 
got; and so I resist Night and Chaos.’ 

‘ 0 Saturn,’ replied Uranus, ‘ thou canst not hold thine 
own, but by making more. Thy oysters are barnacles and 
cockles, and with the next flowing of the tide they will be 
pebbles and sea-foam.’ 

< I see,’ rejoins Saturn, ‘ thou art in league with Night, 
thou art become an evil eye; thou spakest from love ; now 
thy words smite me with hatred. I appeal to Fate, must 
there not be rest!’—‘I appeal to Fate also,’ said Uranus, 

‘ must there not be motion 1 ’ — But Saturn was silent, and 
went on making oysters for a thousand years. 

After that, the word of Uranus came into his mind like a 
ray of the sun, and he made Jupiter ; and then he feared 
again; and nature froze, the things that were made went 
backward, and, to save the world, Jupiter slew his father 
Saturn. 

This may stand for the earliest account of a conversation 
on politics between a Conservative and a Radical, which has 
come down to us. It is ever thus. It is the counteraction 
of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces. Innovation is 
the salient energy : Conservatism the pause on the last move¬ 
ment. £ That which is was made by God,’ saith Conserva¬ 
tism. ‘ He is leaving that, he is entering this other,’ rejoins 
Innovation. 

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of con¬ 
servatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. It 
affirms because it holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it will 
not open its eyes to see a better fact. The castle, which con¬ 
servatism is set to defend, is the actual state of things, good 
and bad. The project of innovation is the best possible state 
of things. Of course, conservatism always has the worst of 
the argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, 
pleading that to change would be to deteriorate ; it must 
saddle itself with the mountainous load of the violence 
and vice of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny 
ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet; whilst innovation 
is always in the right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of final 
success. Conservatism stands on man’s confessed limitations ; 
reform oir his indisputable infinitude ; conservatism on circum¬ 
stance ; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit 
member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things 
to the man himself; conservatism is debonnair and social; 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


163 


reform is individual and imperious. We are reformers in 
spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the 
old ; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. Reform 
is affirmative, conservatism negative ; conservatism goes for 
comfort, reform for truth. Conservatism is more candid to 
behold another’s worth ; reform more disposed to maintain 
and increase its own. Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes 
no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has 
no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great 
difference to your figure and to your thought, whether your 
foot is advancing or receding. Conservatism never puts the 
foot forward ; in the hour when it does that, it is not estab¬ 
lishment, but reform. Conservatism tends to universal seem¬ 
ing and treachery, believes in a negative fate ; believes that 
men’s temper governs them; that for me, it avails not to trust 
in principles; they will fail me; I must bend a little ; it dis¬ 
trusts nature; it thinks there is a general law without a par¬ 
ticular application, — law for all that does not include any 
one. Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, 
to kick with hoofs ; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; 
it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and ele¬ 
vation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. 

And so whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it 
may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, 
that each is a good half, but an impossible whole. Each ex¬ 
poses the abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true 
man, both must combine. Nature does not give the crown of 
its approbation, namely, beauty, to any action or emblem or 
actor, but to one which combines both these elements ; not to 
the rock which resists the waves from age to age, nor to the wave 
which lashes incessantly the rock, but the superior beauty is 
with the oak which stands with its hundred arms against the 
storms of a century, and grows every year like a sapling; or 
the river which ever flowing, yet is found in the same bed 
from age to age; or, greatest of all, the man who has sub¬ 
sisted for years amid the changes of nature, yet has distanced 
himself, so that when you remember what he was, and 
see what he is, you say, what strides ! what a disparity is 
here ! 

Throughout nature the past combines in every creature 
with the present. Each of the convolutions of the sea-shell, 
each node and spine marks one year of the fish’s life, what 
was the mouth of the shell for one season, with the addition 


164 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


of new matter by the growth of the animal, becoming an or¬ 
namental node. The leaves and a shell of soft wood are all 
that the vegetation of this summer has made, but the solid 
columnar stem which lifts that bank of foliage into the air to 
draw the eye and to cool us with its shade, is the gift and 
legacy of dead and buried years. 

In nature, each of these elements being always present, 
each theory has a natural support. As we take our stand on 
Necessity, or on Ethics, shall we go for the conservative, or 
for the reformer. If we read the word historically, we shall 
say, Of all the ages, the present hour and circumstance is 
the cumulative result; this is the best throw of the dice of 
nature that has yet been, or that is yet possible. If we see 
it from the side of Will, or the Moral Sentiment, we shall 
accuse the Past and the Present, and require the impossible 
of the Future. 

But although this bifold fact lies thus united in real nature, 
and so united that no man can continue to exist in whom both 
these elements do not work, yet men are not philosophers, but 
are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their par¬ 
tiality, see ever}dhing in the most absurd manner, and are the 
victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no 
philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, 
our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts 
and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood. 
As this is the invariable method of our training, we must 
give it allowance, and suffer men to learn as they have done 
for six millenniums, a word at a time, to pair off into insane 
parties, and learn the amount of truth each knows, by the 
denial of an equal amount of truth. For the present, then, 
to come at what sum is attainable to us, w T e must even hear 
the parties plead as parties. 

That which is best about conservatism, that which, though 
it cannot be expressed in detail,-inspires reverence in all, is 
the Inevitable. There is the question not only, what the 
conservative says for himself 1 but, why must he say it % 
What insurmountable fact binds him to that side 1 Here is 
the fact which men call Fate, and fate in dread degrees, fate 
behind fate, not to be disposed of by the consideration that 
the Conscience commands this or that, but necessitating the 
question, whether the faculties of man will play him true in 
resisting the facts of universal experience 1 For although the 
commands of the Conscience are essentially absolute, they are 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


165 


historically limitary. Wisdom does not seek a literal rectitude, 
but an useful, that is, a conditioned one, such a one as the 
faculties of man and the constitution of things will warrant. 
The reformer, the partisan, loses himself in driving to the ut¬ 
most some specialty of right conduct, until his own nature 
and all nature resist him; but Wisdom attempts nothing 
enormous and disproportioned to its powers, nothing which it 
cannot perform or nearly perform. We have all a certain 
intellection or presentiment of reform existing in the mind, 
which does not yet descend into the character, and those who 
throw themselves blindly on this lose themselves. Whatever 
they attempt in that direction, fails and reacts suicidally on the 
actor himself. This is the penalty of having transcended 
nature. For the existing world is not a dream, and cannot 
with impunity be treated as a dream ; neither is it a disease ; 
but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of 
whom you were born. Reform converses with possibilities, 
perchance with impossibilities ; but here is sacred fact. This 
also was true, or it could not be : it had life in it, or it could 
not have existed : it has life in it, or it could not continue. 
Your schemes may be feasible, or may not be, but this has the 
indorsement of nature and a long friendship and cohabitation 
with the powers of nature. This will stand until a better cast 
of the dice is made. The contest between the Future and 
the Past is one between Divinity entering, and Divinity de¬ 
parting. You are welcome to try your experiments, and, if 
you can, to displace the actual order by that ideal republic you 
announce, for nothing but God will expel God. But plainly 
the burden of proof must lie with the projector. We hold 
to this until you can demonstrate something better. 

The system of property and law goes back for its origin to 
barbarous and sacred times; it is the fruit of the same mys¬ 
terious cause as the mineral or animal world. There is a nat¬ 
ural sentiment and prepossession in favor of age, of ancestors, 
of barbarous and aboriginal usages, Avhich is a homage to the 
element of necessity and divinity which is in them. The re¬ 
spect for the old names of places, of mountains, and streams, 
is universal. The Indian and barbarous name can never be 
supplanted without Joss. The ancients tell us that the gods 
loved the Ethiopians for their stable customs ; and the Egyp¬ 
tians and Chaldeans, whose origin could not be explored, passed 
among the junior tribes of Greece and Italy for sacred nations. 

Moreover, so deep is the foundation of the existing social 


166 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


system, that it leaves no one out of it. We may be partial, 
but Fate is not. All men have their root in it. You who 
quarrel with the arrangements of society, and are willing to 
embroil all, and risk the indisputable good that exists, for the 
chance of better, live, move, and have your being in this, and 
your deeds contradict your words every day. For as you can¬ 
not jump from the ground without using the resistance of the 
ground, nor put out the boat to sea, without shoving from the 
shore, nor attain liberty without rejecting obligation, so you 
are under the necessity of using the Actual order of things, in 
order to disuse it; to live by it, whilst you wish to take away 
its life. The past has baked your loaf, and in the strength of 
its bread you would break up the oven. But you are betrayed 
by your own nature. You also are conservatives. However 
men please to style themselves, I see no other than a conser¬ 
vative party. You are not only identical with us in your 
needs, but also in your methods and aims. You quarrel with 
my conservatism, but it is to build up one of your own ; it 
will have a new beginning, but the same course and end, the 
same trials, the same passions ; among the lovers of the new I 
.observe that there is a jealousy of the newest, and that the 
seceder from the seceder is as damnable as the pope himself. 

On these and the like grounds of general statement, conser¬ 
vatism plants itself without danger of being displaced. Es¬ 
pecially before this personal appeal, the innovator must confess 
his weakness, must confess that no man is to be found good 
enough to be entitled to stand champion for the principle. 
But when this great tendency comes to practical encounters, 
and is challenged by young men, to whom it is no abstraction, 
but a fact of hunger, distress, and exclusion from opportuni¬ 
ties, it must needs seem injurious. The youth, of course, is 
an innovator by the fact of his birth. There he stands, newly 
born on the planet, a universal beggar, with all the reason of 
things, one would say, on his side. In his first consideration 
how to feed, clothe, and warm himsSlf, he is met by warnings 
on every hand, that this thing and that thing have owners, and 
he must go elsewhere. Then he says; If I am born into the 
earth, where is my part h have the goodness, gentlemen of this 
world, to show me my wood-lot, where I may fell my wood, 
my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where 
to build my cabin.’ 

‘ Touch any wood, or field, or house-lot, on your peril,’ cry 
all the gentlemen of this world ; ‘ but you may come and work 
in ours, for us, and we will give you a piece of bread.’ 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


167 


And what is that peril I 

Knives and muskets, if we meet you in the act; imprison¬ 
ment, if we find you afterward. 

And by what authority, kind gentlemen ] 

By our law. 

And your law, —is it just 1 

As just for you as it was for us. We wrought for others 
under this law, and got our lands so. 

I repeat the question, Is your law just 1 

Not quite just, but necessary. Moreover, it is juster now 
than it was when we were born ; we have made it milder and 
more equal. 

I will none of your law, returns the youth; it encumbers 
me. I cannot understand, or so much as spare time to read 
that needless library of your laws. Nature has sufficiently 
provided me with rewards and sharp penalties, to bind me not 
to transgress. Like the Persian noble of old, I ask “ that I may 
neither command nor obey.” I do not wish to enter into 
your complex social system. I shall serve those whom I can, 
and they who can will serve me. I shall seek those whom I 
love, and shun those whom I love not, and what more can all 
your laws render me 1 

With equal earnestness and good faith, replies to this plain¬ 
tiff an upholder of the establishment, a man of many vir¬ 
tues : — 

Your opposition is feather-brained and over-fine. Young 
man, I have no skill to talk with you, but look at me ; I have 
risen early and sat late, and toiled honestly, and painfully for 
very many years. I never dreamed about methods ; I laid my 
bones to, and drudged for the good I*possess ; it was not got 
by fraud, nor by luck, but by work, and you must show me a 
warrant like these stubborn facts in your own fidelity and 
labor, before I suffer you, on the faith of a few fine words, to 
ride into my estate, and claim to scatter it as your own. 

Now you touch the heai't of the matter, replies the reform¬ 
er. To that fidelity and labor, I pay homage. I am unworthy 
to arraign your manner of living, until I too have been tried. 
But I should be more unworthy, if I did not tell you why I 
cannot walk in your steps. I find this vast network, which 
you call propeidy, extended over the whole planet. I cannot 
occupy the bleakest crag of the White Hills or the Alleghany 
Range, but some man or corporation steps up to me to show 
me that it is his. Now, though I am very peaceable, and on 


168 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


my private account could well enough die, since it appears 
there was some mistake in my creation, and that I have been 
wmsent to this earth, where all the seats were already taken, 
— yet I feel called upon in behalf of rational nature, which I 
represent, to declare to you my opinion, that, if the Earth is 
yours, so also is it mine. All your aggregate existences are 
less to me a fact than is my own ; as I am born to the earth, 
so the Earth is given to me, what I want of it to till and to 
plant; nor could I, without pusillanimity, omit to claim so 
much. I must not only have a name to live, I must live. My 
genius leads me to build a different manner of life from any 
of yours. I cannot then spare you the whole world. I love 
you better. I must tell you the truth practically; and take 
that, which you call yours. It is God’s world and mine ; yours 
as much as you want, mine as much as I want. Besides, I 
know your ways; I know the symptoms of the disease. To 
the end of your power, you will serve this lie which cheats 
you. Your want is a gulf which the possession of the broad 
earth would not fill. Yonder sun in heaven you would pluck 
down from shining on the universe, and make him a property 
and privacy, if you could ; and the moon and the north star 
you would quickly have occasion for in your closet and bed¬ 
chamber. What you do not want for use, you crave for orna¬ 
ment, and what your convenience could spare, your pride can¬ 
not. 

On the other hand, precisely the defence which was set up 
for the British Constitution, namely, that with all its admitted 
defects, rotten boroughs and monopolies, it worked well, and 
substantial justice was somehow done; the wisdom and the 
worth did get into parliament, and every interest did by right, 
or might, or sleight, get represented ; the same defence is set 
iip for the existing institutions. They are not the best; they 
are not just; and in respect to you, personally, 0 brave young 
man ! they cannot be justified. They have, it is most true, 
left you no acre for your own, and no law but our law, to the 
ordaining of which, you were no party. But they do answer 
the end, they are really friendly to the good; unfriendly to 
the bad ; they second the industrious, and the kind ; they fos¬ 
ter genius. They really have so much flexibility as to afford 
your talent and character, on the whole, the same chance of 
demonstration and success which they might have, if there 
was no law and no property. 

It is trivial and merely superstitious to say that nothing is 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


169 


given you, no outfit, no exhibition; for in this institution of 
credit , which is as universal as honesty and promise in the 
human countenance, always some neighbor stands ready to be 
bread and land and tools and stock to the young adventurer. 
And if in any one respect they have come short, see what 
ample retribution of good they have made. They have lost 
no time and spared no expense to collect libraries, museums, 
galleries, colleges, palaces, hospitals, observatories, cities. The 
ages have not been idle, nor kings slack, nor the rich niggardly. 
Have we not atoned for this small offence (which we could not 
help) of leaving you no right in the soil, by this splendid in¬ 
demnity of ancestral and national wealth ? Would you have 
been born like a gypsy in a hedge, and preferred your freedom 
on a heath, and the range of a planet which had no shed or 
boscage to cover you from sun and wind, — to this towered 
and citied world ? to this world of Rome, and Memphis, and 
Constantinople, and Vienna, and Paris, and London, and New 
York ? For thee Naples, Florence, and Venice, for thee the 
fair Mediterranean, the sunny Adriatic; for thee both Indies 
smile : for thee the hospitable North opens its heated palaces 
under the polar circle ; for thee roads have been cut in every 
direction across the land, and fleets of floating palaces with 
every security for strength, and provision for luxury, swim 
by sail and by steam through all the waters of this world. 
Every island for thee has a town ; every town a hotel. Though 
thou wast born landless, yet to thy industry and thrift and 
small condescension to the established usage, — scores of ser¬ 
vants are swarming in every strange place with cap and knee 
to thy command, scores, nay hundreds and thousands, for thy 
wardrobe, thy table, thy chamber, thy library, thy leisure ; 
and every whim is anticipated and served by the best ability 
of the whole population of each country. The king on the 
throne governs for thee, and the judge judges; the barrister 
pleads, the farmer tills, the joiner hammers, the postman 
rides. Is it not exaggerating a trifle to insist on a formal ac¬ 
knowledgment of your claims, when these substantial advan¬ 
tages have been secured to you? Now can your children be 
educated, your labor turned to their advantage, and its fruits 
secured to them after your death. It is frivolous to say, you 
have no acre, because you have not a mathematically measured 
piece of land. Providence takes care that you shall have a 
place, that you are waited for, and come accredited; and, as 
soon as you put your gift to use, you shall have acre or acre’s 

VOL. i. 8 


170 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


worth according to your exhibition of desert, — acre, if you 
need land; acre’s worth, if you prefer to draw, or carve, or 
make shoes, or wheels, to the tilling of the soil. 

Besides, it might temper your indignation at the supposed 
wrong which society has done you, to keep the question before 
you, how society got into this predicament 1 Who put things 
on this false basis 1 No single man, but all men. No man 
voluntarily and knowingly ; but it is the result of that degree 
of culture there is in the planet. The order of things is as 
good as the character of the population permits. Consider it 
as the work of a great and beneficent and progressive neces¬ 
sity, which, from the first pulsation to the first animal life, up 
to the present high culture of the best nations, has advanced 
thus far. Thank the rude foster-mother though she has taught 
you a better wisdom than her own, and has set hopes in your 
heart which shall be history in the next ages. You are yourself 
the result of this manner of living, this foul compromise, this 
vituperated Sodom. It nourished you with care and love on 
its breast as it had nourished many a lover of the right, and 
many a poet, and prophet, and teacher of men. Is it so ir¬ 
remediably bad 1 Then again, if the mitigations are consid¬ 
ered, do not all the mischiefs virtually vanish 1 The form is 
bad, but see you not how every personal character reacts on 
the form, and makes it new T 1 A strong person makes the law 
and custom null before his own will. Then the principle of 
love and truth reappears in the strictest courts of fashion and 
property. Under the richest robes, in the darlings of the 
selectest circles of European or American aristocracy, the strong 
heart will beat with love of mankind, with impatience of acci¬ 
dental distinctions, with the desire to achieve its own fate, 
and make every ornament it wears authentic and real. 

Moreover, as we have already shown that there is no pure 
reformer, so it is to be considered that there is no pure conser¬ 
vative, no man who from the beginning to the end of his life 
maintains the defective institutions ; but he who sets his face 
like a flint against every novelty, when approached in the con¬ 
fidence of conservation, in the presence of friendly and gener¬ 
ous persons, has also his gracious and relenting motions, and 
espouses for the time the cause of man ; and even if this be 
a short-lived emotion, yet the remembrance of it in private 
hours mitigates his selfishness and compliance with custom. 

The Friar Bernard lamented in his cell on Mount Cenis the 
crimes of mankind, and rising one morning before day from 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


171 


his bed of moss and dry leaves, he gnawed his roots and ber¬ 
ries, drank of the spring, and set forth to go to Rome to re¬ 
form the corruption of mankind. On his way he encountered 
many travellers who greeted him courteously ; and the cabins 
of the peasants and the castles of the lords supplied his few 
wants. When he came at last to Rome, his piety and good¬ 
will easily introduced him to many families of the rich, and 
on the first day he saw and talked with gentle mothers with 
their babes at their breasts, who told him how much love they 
bore their children, and how they were perplexed in their daily 
walk lest they should fail in their duty to them. ‘ What! ’ 
he said, ‘ and this on rich embroidered carpets, on marble 
floors, with cunning sculpture, and carved wood, and rich pic¬ 
tures, and piles of books about you V — ‘ Look at our pictures 
and books,’ they said, ‘and we will tell you, good Father, how 
we spent the last evening. These are stories of godly children 
and holy families and romantic sacrifices made in old or in re¬ 
cent times by great and not mean persons ; and last evening, 
our family was collected, and our husbands and brothers dis¬ 
coursed sadly on what we could save and give in the hard 
times.’ Then came in the men, and they said, ‘ What cheer, 
brother 1 Does thy convent want gifts h ’ Then the Friar Ber¬ 
nard went home swiftly with other thoughts than he brought, 
saying, ‘ This way of life is wrong, yet these Romans, whom I 
prayed God to destroy, are lovers, they are lovers; what can I 
doF 

The reformer concedes that these mitigations exist, and 
that, if he proposed comfort, he should take sides with the 
establishment. Your words are excellent, but they do not 
tell the whole. Conservatism is affluent and open-handed, 
but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they 
take somewhat for everything they give. I look lugger, but 
am less; I have more clothes, but am not so warm; more 
armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit. What 
you say of your planted, budded, and decorated world is true 
enough, and I gladly avail myself of its convenience; yet I 
have remarked that what holds in particular, holds in general, 
that the plant Man does not require for his most glorious 
flowering this pomp of preparation and convenience, but the 
thoughts of some beggarly Homer who strolled, God knows 
when, in the infancy and barbarism of the old world; the 
gravity and sense of some slave Moses who leads away his 
fellow-slaves from their masters; the contemplation of some 


172 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


Scythian Anacharsis; the erect, formidable valor of some 
Dorian townsmen in the town of Sparta; the vigor of Clovis 
the Frank, and Alfred the Saxon, and Alaric the Goth, and 
Mahomet, Ali, and Omar the Arabians, Saladin the Curd, and 
Othman the Turk, sufficed to build what you call society, on 
the spot and in the instant when the sound mind in a sound 
body appeared. Rich and fine is your dress, 0 conservatism ! 
your horses are of the best blood; your roads are well cut 
and well paved ; your pantry is full of meats and your cellar 
of wines, and a very good state and condition are you for 
gentlemen and ladies to live under; but every one of these 
goods steals away a drop of my blood. I want the necessity 
of supplying my own wants. All this costly culture of yours 
is not necessary. Greatness does not need it. Yonder peas¬ 
ant, who sits neglected there in a corner, carries a whole revo¬ 
lution of man and nature in his head, which shall be a sacred 
history to some future ages. For man is the end of nature; 
nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe 
as he; no moss, no lichen is so easily bora; and he takes 
along with him and puts out from himself the whole appara¬ 
tus of society and condition extempore , as an army encamps 
in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates 
a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for 
feasting, for conversation, and for love. 

These considerations, urged by those whose characters, and 
whose fortunes are yet to be formed, must needs command 
the sympathy of all reasonable persons. But beside that 
charity which should make all adult persons interested for 
the youth, and engage them to see that he has a free field 
and fair play on his entrance into life, we are bound to see 
that the society, of which we compose a part, does not per¬ 
mit the formation or continuance of views and practices in¬ 
jurious to the honor and welfare of mankind. The objection 
to conservatism, when embodied in a party, is, that in its love 
of acts, it hates principles ; it lives in the senses, not in truth ; 
it sacrifices to despair; it goes for availableness in its can¬ 
didate, not for worth; and for expediency in its measures, 
and not for the right. Under pretence of allowing for friction, 
it makes so many additions and supplements to the machine 
of society, that it will play smoothly and softly, but will no 
longer grind any grist. 

The conservative party in the universe concedes that the 
radical would talk sufficiently to the purpose, if we were still 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


173 


in the garden of Eden ; he legislates for man as he ought to 
be ; his theory is right, but he makes no allowance for friction; 
and this omission makes his whole doctrine false. The idealist 
retorts, that the conservative falls into a far more noxious er¬ 
ror in the other extreme. The conservative assumes sickness 
as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total 
legislation is for the present distress, a universe in slippers 
and flannels, with bib and pap-spoon, swallowing pills and 
herb-tea. Sickness gets organized as well as health, the vice 
as well as the virtue. Now that a vicious system of trade 
has existed so long, it has stereotyped itself in the human 
generation, and misers are born. And now that sickness has 
got such a foothold, leprosy has grown cunning, has got into 
the ballot-box; the lepers outvote the clean; society has re¬ 
solved itself into a Hospital Committee, and all its laws are 
quarantine. If any man resist, and set up a foolish hope he 
has entertained as good against the general despair, society 
frowns on him, shuts him out of her opportunities, her grana¬ 
ries, her refectories, her water and bread, and will serve him 
a sexton’s turn. Conservatism takes as low a view of everjjr 
part of human action and passion. Its religion is just as 
bad; a lozenge for the sick; a dolorous tune to beguile the 
distemper; mitigations of pain by pillows and anodynes; al¬ 
ways mitigations, never remedies; pardons for sin, funeral 
honors, — never self-help, renovation, and virtue. Its social 
and political action has no better aim ; to keep out wind and 
weather, to bring the day and year about, and make the 
world last our day ; not to sit on the world and steer it; not 
to sink the memory of the past in the glory of a new and 
more excellent creation; a timid cobbler and patcher, it de¬ 
grades whatever it touches. The cause of education is urged 
in this country with the utmost earnestness, — on what 
ground 1 why on this, that the people have the power, and 
if they are not instructed to sympathize with the intelligent, 
reading, trading, and governing class, inspired with a taste for 
the same competitions and prizes, they will upset the fair 
pageant of Judicature, and perhaps lay a hand on the sacred 
muniments of wealth itself, and new distribute the land. Re¬ 
ligion is taught in the same spirit. The contractors who were 
building a road out of Baltimore, some years ago, found the 
Irish laborers quarrelsome and refractory, to a degree that 
embarrassed the agents, and seriously interrupted the pro¬ 
gress of the work. The corporation were advised to call off 


174 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


the police, and build a Catholic chapel, which they did; the 
priest presently restored order, and the work went on pros¬ 
perously. Such hints, be sure, are too valuable to be lost. 
If you do not value the Sabbath, or other religious institu¬ 
tions, give yourself no concern about maintaining them. They 
have already accpiired a market value as conservators of prop¬ 
erty ; and if priest and church-member should fail, the cham¬ 
bers of commerce and the presidents of the banks, the very 
innholders and landlords of the county would muster with 
fury to their support. 

Of course, religion in such hands loses its essence. Instead 
of that reliance, which the soul suggests on the eternity of 
truth and duty, men are misled into a reliance on institutions, 
which, the moment they cease to be the instantaneous crea¬ 
tions of the devout sentiment, are worthless. Religion among 
the low becomes low. As it loses its truth, it loses credit with 
the sagacious. They detect the falsehood of the preaching, 
but when they say so, all good citizens cry, Hush; do not 
weaken the state, do not take off the strait-jacket from dan¬ 
gerous persons. Every honest fellow must keep up the hoax 
the best he can; must patronize providence and piety, and 
wherever he sees anything that will keep men amused, schools 
or churches or poetry, or picture-galleries or music, or what 
not, he must cry, “ Hist-a-boy,” and urge the game on. What 
a compliment we pay to the good Spirit with our superser- 
viceable zeal! 

But not to balance reasons for and against the establish¬ 
ment any longer, and if it still be asked in this necessity of 
partial organization, which party on the whole has the highest 
claims on our sympathy? I bring it home to the private 
heart, where all such questions must have their final arbitra¬ 
ment. How will every strong and generous mind choose its 
ground, — with the defenders of the old ? or with the seekers 
of the new ? Which is that state which promises to edify a 
great, brave, and beneficent man; to throw him on his re¬ 
sources, and tax the strength of his character 1 On which part 
will each of us find himself in the hour of health and of aspira¬ 
tion ? 

I understand well the respect of mankind for war, because 
that breaks up the Chinese stagnation of society, and demon¬ 
strates the personal merits of all men. A state of war or an¬ 
archy, in which law has little force, is so far valuable, that it 
puts every man on trial The man of principle is known as 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


175 


such, and even in the fury of faction is respected. In the civil 
wars of France, Montaigne alone, among all the French gentry, 
kept his castle gates unbarred, and made his personal integ¬ 
rity as good at least as a regiment. The man of courage and 
resources is shown, and the effeminate and base person. 
Those who rise above war, and those who fall below it, it easi¬ 
ly discriminates, as well as those who, accepting its rude con¬ 
ditions, keep their own head by their own sword. 

But in peace and a commercial state we depend, not as we 
ought, on our knowledge and all men’s knowledge that we are 
honest men, but we cowardly lean on the virtue of others. 
For it is always the virtue of some men in the society, which 
keeps the law in any reverence and power. Is there not some¬ 
thing shameful that I should owe my peaceful occupancy of 
my house and field, not to the knowledge of my countrymen 
that I am useful, but to their respect for sundry other reputa¬ 
ble persons, I know not whom, whose joint virtues still keep 
the law in good odor 1 

It will never make any difference to a hero what the laws are. 
His greatness will shine and accomplish itself unto the end, 
whether they second him or not. If he have earned his bread 
by drudgery, and in the narrow and crooked ways which were 
all an evil law had left him, he will make it at least honorable 
by his expenditure. Of the past he will take no heed ; for its 
wrongs he will not hold himself responsible : he will say, all 
the meanness of my progenitors shall not bereave me of the 
power to make this hour and company fair and fortunate. 
Whatsoever streams of power and commodity flow to me, shall 
of me acquire healing virtue, and become fountains of safety. 
Cannot I too descend a Redeemer into nature 1 Whosoever 
hereafter shall name my name, shall not record a malefactor, 
but a benefactor in the earth. If there be power in good in¬ 
tention, in fidelity, and in toil, the north wind shall be purer, 
the stars in heaven shall glow with a kindlier beam, that 1 have 
lived. I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant 
of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelli¬ 
gence and good-will at the heart of things, and ever higher and 
yet higher leadings. These are my engagements; how can 
your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men ? On 
the other hand, these dispositions establish their relations to 
me. Wherever there is worth I shall be greeted. Wherever 
there are men, are the objects of my study and love. Sooner 
or later all men will be my friends, and will testify in all methods 


176 


THE CONSERVATIVE. 


the energy of their regard. I cannot thank your law for my 
protection. I protect it. It is not in its power to protect me. 
It is my business to make myself revered. I depend on my 
honor, my labor, and my dispositions, for my place in the af¬ 
fections of mankind, and not on any conventions or parchments 
of yours. 

But if I allow myself in derelictions, and become idle and 
dissolute, I quickly come to love the protection of a strong law, 
because I feel no title in myself to my advantages. To the 
intemperate and covetous person no love flows ; to him man¬ 
kind would pay no rent, no dividend, if force were once relaxed ; 
nay, if they could give their verdict, they ’would say, that his 
self-indulgence and his oppression deserved punishment from 
society, and not that rich board and lodging he now enjoys. 
The law acts then as a screen of his unworthiness, and makes 
him worse the longer it protects him. 

In conclusion, to return from this alternation of partial views, 
to the high platform of universal and necessary history, it is a 
happiness for mankind that innovation has got on so far, and 
has so free a field before it. The boldness of the hope men en¬ 
tertain transcends all former experience. It calms and cheers 
them with the picture of a simple and equal life of truth and 
piety. And this hope flowered on what tree 1 It was not im¬ 
ported from the stock of some celestial plant, but grew here 
on the wild crab of conservatism. It is much that this old and 
vituperated system of things has borne so fair a child. It 
predicts that, amidst a planet peopled with conservatives, one 
Reformer may yet be born. 


THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 


A Lecture read at tiie Masonic Temple, Boston, 
January, 1842. 








































f 












THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 


first thing we have to say respecting what are called 
Jp new views here in New England, at the present time, is, 
that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast 
into the mould of these new times. The light is always iden¬ 
tical in its composition, but it falls on a great variety of ob¬ 
jects, and by so falling is first revealed to us, not in its own 
form, for it is formless, but in theirs; in like manner, thought 
only appears in the objects it classifies. What is popularly 
called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as 
it appears in 1842. As thinkers, 'mankind have ever divided 
into two sects, Materialists and Idealists ; the first class founded 
on experience, the second on consciousness ; the first class be¬ 
ginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class 
perceive that the senses are not final, and say the senses give 
us representations of things* but what are the things them¬ 
selves, they cannot tbll. The materialist insists on facts, on 
history, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants 
of man ; the idealist, on the power of Thought and of Will, on 
inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture. These two 
modes of thinking are both natural, but the idealist contends 
that his way of thinking is in higher nature. He concedes all 
that the other affirms, admits the impressions of sense, admits 
their coherency, their use and beauty, and then asks the ma¬ 
terialist for his grounds of assurance that things are as his 
senses represent them. But I, he saySj affirm facts not affect¬ 
ed by the illusions of sense, facts which are of the same nature 
as the faculty which reports them, and not liable to doubt; facts 
which in their first appearance to us assume a native superior¬ 
ity to material facts, degrading these into a language by which 
the first are to be spoken ; facts which it only needs a retire¬ 
ment from the senses to discern. Every materialist will be an 



180 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a mate¬ 
rialist. 

The idealist, in speaking of events, sees them as spirits. ITe 
does not deny the sensuous fact : by no means ; but he will not 
see that alone. He does not deny the presence of this table, 
this chair, and the walls of this room, but he looks at these 
things as the reverse side of the tapestry, as the other end, each 
being a sequel or completion of a spiritual fact which merely 
concerns him. This manner of looking at things transfers 
every object in nature from an independent and anomalous po¬ 
sition without there, into the consciousness. Even the materi¬ 
alist Condillac, perhaps the most logical expounder of material¬ 
ism, was constrained to say : “ Though we should soar into the 
heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go 
out of ourselves; it is always our ow r n thought that w T e per¬ 
ceive.” What more could an idealist say 1 

The materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, mocks 
at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers and dreamers, and believes 
that his life is solid, that he at least takes nothing for granted, 
but knows where he stands, and what he does. Yet how easy 
it is to show him that he also is a phantom walking and work¬ 
ing amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or 
two beyond his daily questions, to find his solid universe grow¬ 
ing dim and impalpable before his sense. The sturdy capitalist, 
no matter how deep and square on blocks of Quincy granite he 
lays the foundations of his banking-house or Exchange, must 
set it, at last, not on a cube corresponding to the angles of his 
structure, but on a mass of unknow T n materials and solidity, 
red-hot or white-hot, perhaps at the core, which rounds off to 
an almost perfect sphericity, and lies floating in soft air, and 
goes spinning away, dragging bank and banker with it at a rate 
of thousands of miles the hour, he knows not whither, — a bit 
of bullet, now glimmering, now darkling through a small cubic 
space on the edge of an unimaginable pit of emptiness. And 
this wild balloon, in which his whole venture is embarked, is a 
just symbol of his whole state and faculty. One thing, at 
least, he says is certain, and does not give me the headache, 
that figures do not lie ; the multiplication-table has been hith¬ 
erto found unimpeachable truth; and, moreover, if I put a 
gold eagle in my safe, I find it again to-morrow ; but for these 
thoughts, I know not whence they are. They change and pass 
away. But ask him why he believes that an uniform expe¬ 
rience will continue uniform, or on what grounds he founds his 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


181 


faith in his figures, and he will perceive that his mental fabric 
is built up on just as strange and quaking foundations as his 
proud edifice of stone. 

In the order of thought, the materialist takes his departure 
from the external world, and esteems a man as one product of 
that. The idealist takes his departure from his consciousness, 
and reckons the world an appearance. The materialist re¬ 
spects sensible masses, Society, Government, social art, and 
luxury, every establishment, every mass, whether majority of 
numbers, or extent of space, or amount of objects, every social 
action. The idealist has another measure, which is metaphys¬ 
ical, namely, the rank which things themselves take in his 
consciousness; not at all, the size or appearance. Mind is 
the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better 
or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, history, are only sub¬ 
jective phenomena. Although in his action overpowered by 
the laws of action, and so, warmly co-operating with men, even 
preferring them to himself, yet when he speaks scientifically, 
or after the order of thought, he is constrained to degrade 
persons into representatives of truths. He does not respect 
labor, or the products of labor, namely, property, otherwise 
than as a manifold symbol, illustrating with wonderful fidelity 
of details the laws of being; he does not respect government, 
except as far as it reiterates the law of his mind; nor the 
church ; nor charities ; nor arts, for themselves ; but hears, as 
at a vast distance, what they say, as if his consciousness would 
speak to him through a pantomimic scene. His thought, — 
that is the Universe. His experience inclines him to behold 
the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing perpetual¬ 
ly outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, cen¬ 
tre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard 
all things as having a subjective or relative existence, relative 
to that aforesaid Unknown Centre of him. 

From this transfer of the world into the consciousness, this 
beholding of all things in the mind, follow easily his whole 
ethics. It is simpler to be self-dependent. The height, the 
deity of man is, to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign 
force. Society is good when it does not violate me ; but best 
when it is likest to solitude. Everything real is self-existent. 
Everything divine shares the self-existence of Deity. All that 
you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you 
are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those 
that are dependent and of those that are independent of your 


182 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


will. Bo not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend 
and remedy remote effects ; let the soul be erect^and all things 
will go well. You think me the child of my circumstances : 
I make my circumstance. Let any thought or motive of mine 
be different from that they are, the difference will transform 
my condition and economy. I — this thought which is called 
I — is the mould into which the world is poured like melted 
wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape 
of the mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but it 
is the power of me. Am I in harmony with myself 'l my position 
will seem to you just and commanding. Am I vicious and in¬ 
sane I my fortunes will seem to you obscure and descending. 
As I am, so shall I associate, and, so shall I act; Caesar’s his¬ 
tory will paint out Caesar. Jesus acted so, because he thought 
so. I do not wish to overlook or to gainsay any reality ; I say, 
I make my circumstance: but if you ask me, Whence am III 
feel like other men my relation to that Fact which cannot be 
spoken or defined, nor even thought, but which exists, and will 
exist. 

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spir¬ 
itual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual open¬ 
ness of the human mind to new influx of light and powerj he 
believes in inspiration and in ecstasy. He wishes that the 
spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to 
the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, with¬ 
out the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything 
positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of 
inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said 
it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and 
measures on the spirit than its own. 

In action, he easily incurs the charge of antinomianism by 
his avowal that he, who has the Lawgiver, may with safety not 
only neglect, but even contravene every written command¬ 
ment.. In the play of Othello, the expiring Desdemona ab¬ 
solves her husband of the murder, to her attendant Emilia. 
Afterwards, when Emilia charges him with the crime, Othello 
exclaims, 

‘ You heard her say herself it was not I.” 

Emilia replies, 

“ The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil.” 

Of this fine incident, Jacobi, the Transcendental moralist, 
makes use, with other parallel instances, in his reply to Fichte. 


THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 


183 


Jacobi, refusing all measure of right and wrong except the de¬ 
terminations of the private spirit, remarks that there is no 
crime but has sometimes been a virtue. “ I,” he says, “ am 
that atheist, that godless person who, in opposition to an im¬ 
aginary doctrine of calculation, would lie as the dying Desde- 
mona lied; would lie and deceive, as Pylades when he person¬ 
ated Orestes ; would assassinate like Timoleon ; would perjure 
myself like Epaminondas, and John de Witt; I would resolve 
on suicide like Cato ; I would commit sacrilege with David ; 
yea, and pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, for no other rea¬ 
son than that I was fainting for lack of food. For, I have as¬ 
surance in myself, that, in pardoning these faults according to 
the letter, man exerts the sovereign right which the majesty 
of his being confers on him; he sets the seal of his divine na¬ 
ture to the grace he accords.”* 

In like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in hu¬ 
man thought or virtue, any reliance on the vast, the unknown ; 
any presentiment; any extravagance of faith, the spiritualist 
adopts it as most in nature. The Oriental mind has always 
tended to this largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. The 
Buddhist who thanks no man, who says, “ Do not flatter your 
benefactors,” but who, in his conviction that every good deed 
can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the 
benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he 
should, is a Transcendentalist. 

You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a 
Transcendental party ; that there is no pure Transcendental¬ 
ist ; that we know of none but prophets and heralds of such a 
philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to 
the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. 
We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely 
spiritual life, history has afforded no example. 1 mean, we 
have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, 
and eaten angels’ food ; who, trusting to his sentiments, found 
life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found 
himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weap- 
oned, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands. 
Only in the instinct of the lower animals, we find the sugges¬ 
tion of the methods of it, and something higher than our un¬ 
derstanding. The squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers 
honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus pro¬ 
vided for without selfishness or disgrace. 

* Coleridge’s Translation. 


184 


THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 


Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is the Saturnalia 
or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man 
in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience 
hinders the satisfaction of his wish? Nature is transcendental, 
exists primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet 
takes no thought for the morrow. Man owns the dignity of 
the life which throbs around him in chemistry, and tree, and 
animal, and in the involuntary functions of his own body ; yet 
he is balked when he tries to fling himself into this enchanted 
circle, where all is done without degradation. Yet genius and 
virtue predict in man the same absence of private ends, and of 
condescension to circumstances, united with every trait and 
talent of oeauty and power. 

This way of thinking, falling on Roman times, made Stoic 
philosophers; falling on despotic times, made patriot Catos and 
Brutuses; hilling on Superstitious times, made prophets and 
apostles; on popish times, made protestants and ascetic monks, 
preachers of Faith against the preachers of Works ; on prelat- 
ical times, made Puritans and Quakers; and falling on Unitarian 
and commercial times, makes the peculiar shades of Idealism 
•which we know. 

It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism 
of the present day acquired the name of Transcendental, from 
the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who 
replied to the sceptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted 
that there was nothing in the intellect which was not previ¬ 
ously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there 
was a very important class of ideas, or imperative forms, which 
did not come by experience, but through which experience was 
acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and 
he denominated them Transcendental forms. The extraordi¬ 
nary profoundness and precision of that man’s thinking have 
given vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, tc 
that extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive 
thought, is popularly called at the present day Transcendental . 

Although, as we have said, there is no pure Transcendental- 
ist, yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give 
them at least in our creed all authority over our experience, 
has deeply colored the conversation and poetry of the present 
day; and the history of genius and of religion in these times, 
though impure, and as yet not incarnated in any powerful in¬ 
dividual, will be the history of this tendency. 

It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the closest observer, 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


185 


that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw them¬ 
selves from the common labors and competitions of the market 
and the caucus, and partake themselves to a certain solitary 
and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet 
appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves 
aloof: they feel the disproportion between their faculties and 
the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the coun¬ 
try and perish of ennui to the degradation of such charities 
and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. They 
are striking work, and crying out for somewhat worthy to do ! 
What they do, is done only because they are overpowered by 
the humanities that speak on all sides ; and they consent to 
such labor as is open to them, though to their lofty dream the 
writing of Iliads or Hamlets, or the building of cities or em¬ 
pires, seems drudgery. 

Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, 
and these must. The question, which a wise man and a stu¬ 
dent of modern history will ask, is, what that kind is 1 And 
truly, as in ecclesiastical history we take so much pains to 
know what the Gnostics, wdiat the Essenes, what the Mani- 
chees, and what the Reformers believed, it would not misbe¬ 
come us to ^inquire nearer home, what these companions and 
contemporaries of ours think and do, at least so far as these 
thoughts and actions appear to be not accidental and personal, 
but common to many, and the inevitable flower of the Tree of 
Time. Our American literature and spiritual history are, we 
confess, in the optative mood ; but whoso knows these seething 
brains, these admirable radicals, these unsocial worshippers, 
these talkers who talk the sun and moon away, will believe 
that this heresy cannot pass away without leaving its 
mark. 

They are lonely ; the spirit of their writing and conversa¬ 
tion is lonely ; they repel influences ; they shun general so¬ 
ciety ; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the 
house, to live in the country rather than in the town, and to 
find their tasks and amusements in solitude. Society, to be 
sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk 
alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to be unfit to 
be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society 
will retaliate. Meantime, this retirement does not proceed 
from any whim on the part of these separators; but if any 
one will take pains to talk with them, he will find that this 
part is chosen both from temperament and from principle; 


186 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


with some unwillingness, too, and as a choice of the less of 
two evils ; for these persons are not by nature melancholy, 
sour, and unsocial, — they are not stockish or brute, — but 
joyous; susceptible, affectionate ; they have even more than 
others a great wish to be loved. Like the young Mozart, they 
are rather ready to cry ten times a day, “ But are you sure 
you love me ? ” Nay, if they tell you their whole thought, 
they will own that love seems to them the last and highest 
gift of nature ; that there are persons whom in their hearts 
they daily thank for existing, — persons wdiose faces are per¬ 
haps unknown to them, but whose fame and spirit have pene¬ 
trated their solitude, — and for whose sake they wish to exist. 
To behold the beauty of another character, which inspires a 
new interest in our own; to behold the beauty lodged in a 
human being, with such vivacity of apprehension, that I am 
instantly forced home to inquire if I am not deformity itself: 
to behold in another the expression of a love so high that it 
assures itself, — assures itself also to me against every possi¬ 
ble casualty except my unworthiness ; these are degrees on the 
scale of human happiness, to which they have ascended; and 
it is a fidelity to this sentiment which has made common asso¬ 
ciation distasteful to them. They wish a just and even fellow¬ 
ship, or none. They cannot gossip with you, and they do not 
wish, as they are sincere and religious, to gratify any mere 
curiosity which you may entertain. Like fairies, they do not 
wish to be spoken of. Love me, they say, but do not ask who 
is my cousin and my uncle. If you do not need to hear my 
thought, because you can read it in my face and my behavior, 
then I will tell it you from sunrise to sunset If you can¬ 
not divine it, you would not understand what I say. I 
will not molest myself for you. I do not wish to be 
piofaned. 

ind yet, it seems as if this loneliness, and not this love, 
wcVuld prevail in their circumstances, because of the extrava¬ 
gant demand they make on human nature. That, indeed, con¬ 
stitutes a new feature in their portrait, that they are the most 
exacting and extortionate critics. Their quarrel with every 
man they meet is not with his kind, but with his degree. 
There is not enough of him, — that is the only fault. They 
prolong their privilege of childhood in this wise, of doing 
nothing, — but making immense demands on all the gladiators 
in the lists of action and fame. They make us feel the 
strange disappointment which overcasts every human youth. 


THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 


187 


So many promising youths, and never a finished man ! The 
profound nature will have a savage rudeness; the delicate one 
will be shallow, or the victim of sensibility; the richly accom¬ 
plished will have some capital absurdity ; and so every piece 
has a crack. ’T is strange, but this masterpiece is a result of 
such an extreme delicacy, that the most unobserved flaw in 
the boy will neutralize the most aspiring genius, and spoil the 
work. Talk with a seaman of the hazards to life in his profes¬ 
sion, and he will ask you, “ Where are the old sailors do you 
not see that all are young men 1 ” And we, on this sea of 
human thought, in like manner inquire, Where are the old 
idealists 1 where are they who represented to the last genera¬ 
tion that extravagant hope, which a few happy aspirants sug¬ 
gest to ours 1 In looking at the class of counsel, and power, 
and wealth, and at the matronage of the land, amidst all the 
prudence and all the triviality, one asks, Where are they who 
represented genius, virtue, the invisible and heavenly world, 
to these 1 Are they dead, — taken in early ripeness to the 
gods, — as ancient wisdom foretold their fate 1 Or did the 
high idea die out of them, and leave their unperfumed body 
as its tomb and tablet, announcing to all that the celestial in¬ 
habitant, who once gave them beauty, had departed h Will it 
be better with the new generation 1 We easily predict a fair 
future to each new candidate who enters the lists, but we are 
frivolous and volatile, and by low aims and ill example do what 
we can to defeat this hope. Then these youths bring us a 
rough but effectual aid. By their unconcealed dissatisfaction 
they expose our poverty, and the insignificance of man to man. 
A man is a poor limitary benefactor. He ought to be a shower 
of benefits, — a great influence, which should never let his 
brother go, but should refresh old merits continually with new 
ones; so that, though absent, he should never be out of my 
mind, his name never far from my lips; but if the earth should 
open at my side, or my last hour were come, his name should 
be the prayer I should utter to the Universe. But in our ex¬ 
perience, man is cheap, and friendship wants its deep sense. 
We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do 
not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go. 
These exacting children advertise us of our wants. There is no 
compliment, no smooth speech with them; they pay you only this 
one compliment, of insatiable expectation; they aspire, they 
severely exact, and if they only stand fast in this watch-tower, 
and persist in demanding unto the end, and without end, then 


188 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


are they terrible friends, whereof poet and priest cannot 
choose but stand in awe ; and what if they eat clouds, and 
drink wind, they have not been without service to the race of 
man. 

With this passion for what is great and extraordinary, it 
cannot be wondered at, that they are repelled by vulgarity 
and frivolity in people. They say to themselves, It is better 
to be alone than in bad company. And it is really a wish to 
be met, — the wish to find society for their hope and religion, 
-— which prompts them to shun what is called society. They 
feel that they are never so fit for friendship, as when they 
have quitted mankind, and taken themselves to friend. A 
picture, a book, a favorite spot in the hills or the woods, which 
they can people with the fair and worthy creation of the 
fancy, can give them often forms so vivid, that these for the 
time shall seem real, and society the illusion. 

But their solitary and fastidious manners not only withdraw 
them from the conversation, but from the labors of the world; 
they are not good citizens, not good members of society; unwill¬ 
ingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens; 
they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public 
religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions 
foreign or domestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in 
the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. The 
philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not 
mean sloth : they had as lief hear that their friend is dead, as 
that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and 
can never do anything for humanity. What right, cries the 
good world, has the man of genius to retreat from work, and 
indulge himself 1 The popular literary creed seems to be, ‘ I 
am a sublime genius; I ought not therefore to labor.’ But 
genius is the power to labor better and more availably. De¬ 
serve thy genius: exalt it. The good, the illuminated, sit 
apart from the rest, censuring their dulness and vices, as if 
they thought that, by sitting very grand in their chairs, the 
very brokers, attorneys, and congressmen would see the error 
of their ways, and flock to them. But the good and wise 
must learn to act, and carry salvation to the combatants and 
demagogues in the dusty arena below. 

On the part of these children, it is replied, that life and 
their faculty seem to them gifts too rich to be squandered on 
such trifles as you propose to them. What you call your fun¬ 
damental institutions, your great and holy causes, seem to 


THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 


189 


them great abuses, and when nearly seen, paltry matters. 
Each ‘ Cause,’ as it is called, -— say Abolition, Temperance, 
say Calvinism, or Unitarianism, — becomes speedily a little 
shop, where the article, let it have been at first never so sub¬ 
tle and ethereal, is now made up into portable and convenient 
cakes, and retailed in small quantities to suit purchasers. 
You make very free use of these words ‘ great ’ and ‘ holy,’ 
but few things appear to them such. Few persons have any 
magnificence of nature to inspire enthusiasm, and the philan¬ 
thropies and charities have a certain air of quackery. As to 
the general course of living, and the daily employments of 
men, they cannot see much virtue in these, since they are 
parts of this vicious circle ; and, as no great ends are answered 
by the men, there is nothing noble in the arts by which they 
are maintained. Nay, they have made the experiment, and 
found that, from the liberal professions to the coarsest manual 
labor, and from the courtesies of the academy and the college 
to the conventions of the cotillon-room and the morning call, 
there is a spirit of cowardly compromise and seeming, which 
intimates a frightful scepticism, a life without love, and an 
activity without an aim. 

Unless the action is necessary, unless it is adequate, I do not 
wish to perform it. I do not wish to do one thing but once. 
I do not love routine. Once possessed of the principle, it is 
equally easy to make four or forty thousand applications of it. 
A great man will be content to have indicated in any the slight¬ 
est manner his perception of the reigning Idea of his time, and 
will leave to those who like it the multiplication of examples. 
When he has hit the white, the rest may shatter the target. 
Everything admonishes us how needlessly long life is. Every 
moment of a hero so raises and cheers us, that a twelvemonth 
is an age. All that the brave Xanthus brings home from his 
wars, is the recollection that, at the storming of Samos, “ in 
the heat of the battle, Pericles smiled on me, and passed on to 
another detachment.” It is the quality of the moment, not 
the number of days, of events, or of actors, that imports. 

New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: 
if you want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater 
want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish 
of rest and rust: but we do not like your work. 

* Then,’ says the world, ‘ show me your own.’ 

‘ We have none.’ 

‘ What will you do, then 1 ’ cries the world. 


190 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


‘ We will wait.’ 

‘ How long 'l ’ 

‘ Until the Universe rises up and calls us to work.’ 

‘ But whilst you wait, you grow old and useless.’ 

‘Be it so : I can sit in a corner and perish, (as you call it,) 
but I will not move until I have the highest command. If no 
call should come for years, for centuries, then I know that the 
want of the Universe is the attestation of faith by my absti¬ 
nence. Your virtuous projects, so called, do not cheer me. I 
know that which shall come will cheer me. If I cannot work, 
at least I need not lie. All that is clearly due to-day is not to 
lie. In other places, other men have encountered sharp trials, 
and have behaved themselves well. The martyrs were sawn 
asunder, or hung alive on meat-hooks. Cannot we screw our 
courage to patience and truth, and without complaint, or even 
with good-humor, await our turn of action in the Infinite 
Counsels 1 ’ 

But to come a little closer to the secret of these persons, we 
must say, that to them it seems a very easy matter to answer 
the objections of the man of the world, but not so easy to dis¬ 
pose of the doubts and objections that occur to themselves. 
They are exercised in their own spirit with queries, which ac¬ 
quaint them with all adversity, and with the trials of the bravest 
heroes. When I ask them concerning their private experience, 
they answered somewhat in this wise: It is not to be denied 
that there must be some wide difference between my faith and 
other faith; and mine is a certain brief experience, which sur¬ 
prised me in the highway or in the market, in some place, at 
some time, — whether in the body or out of the body, God 
knoweth, — and made me aware that I had played the fool with 
fools all this time, but that law existed for me and for all; that 
to me belonged trust, a child’s trust and obedience, and the 
worship of ideas, and I should never be fool more. Well, in 
the space of an hour, probably, I was let down from this height; 
I was at my old tricks, the selfish member of a selfish society. 
My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world ; I ask, 
When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing 
an Universe which I do not use! .1 wish to exchange this 
flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow 
for a benign climate. 

These two states of thought diverge every moment, and 
stand in wild contrast. To him who looks at his life from 
these moments of illumination, it will seem that he skulks and 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


191 


plays a mean, shiftless, and subaltern part in the world. That 
is to be done which he has not skill to do, or to be said which 
others can say better, and he lies by, or occupies his hands with 
some plaything, until his hour comes again. Much of our read¬ 
ing, much of our labor, seems mere waiting : it was not that 
we were born for. Any other could do it as well, or better. So 
little skill enters into these works, so little do they mix with the 
divine life, that it really signifies little what we do, whether we 
turn a grindstone, or ride, or run, or make fortunes, or govern 
the state. The worst feature of this double consciousness is, 
that the two lives, of the understanding and of the soul, which 
■we lead, really show very little relation to each other, never 
meet and measure each other : one prevails now, all buzz and 
din ; and the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; 
and with the progress of life, the two discover no greater dis¬ 
position to reconcile themselves. Yet what is my faith h What 
am 1 1 What but a thought of deep serenity and independence, 
an abode in the deep blue sky *1 Presently the clouds shut down 
again ; yet we retain the belief that this petty web we weave 
will at last be overshot and reticulated with veins of the blue, 
and that the moments will characterize the days. Patience, 
then, is for us, is it not h Patience, and still patience. When 
we pass, as presently we shall, into some new infinitude, out of 
this Iceland of negations, it will please us to reflect that, 
though we had few virtues or consolations we bore with our 
indigence, nor once strove to repair it with hypocrisy or false 
heat of any kind. 

But this class are not sufficiently characterized, if we omit 
to add that they are lovers and worshippers of Beauty. In 
the eternal trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, each in 
its perfection including the three, they prefer to make Beauty 
the sign and head. Something of the same taste is observable, 
in all the moral movements of the time, in the religious and 
benevolent enterprises. They have a liberal, even an sesthetic 
spirit. A reference to Beauty in action sounds, to be sure, a 
little hollow and ridiculous in the ears of the old church. In 
politics, it has often sufficed, when they treated of justice, if 
they kept the bounds of selfish calculation. If they granted 
restitution, it was prudence which granted it. But the justice 
which is now claimed for the black, and the pauper, and the 
drunkard is for Beauty, — is for a necessity to the soul of the 
agent, not of the beneficiary. I say, this is the tendency, not 
yet the realization. Our virtue totters and trips, does not yet 


192 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


walk firmly. Its representatives are austere; they preach and 
denounce; their rectitude is not yet a grace. They are still 
liable to that slight taint of burlesque which, in our strange 
world, attaches to the zealot. A saint should be as dear as 
the apple of the eye. Yet we are tempted to smile, and we 
flee from the working to the speculative reformer, to escape 
that same slight ridicule. Alas for these days of derision and 
criticism ! We call the Beautiful the highest, because it ap¬ 
pears to us the golden mean, escaping the dowdiness of the 
good, and the heartlessness of the true. They are lovers of 
nature also, and find an indemnity in the inviolable order of 
the world for the violated order and grace of man. 

There is, no doubt, a great deal of well-founded objection 
to be spoken or felt against the sayings and doings of this 
class, some of whose traits we have selected ; no doubt, they 
will lay themselves open to criticism and to lampoons, and as 
ridiculous stories will be .to be told of them as of any. There 
will be cant and pretension ; there will be subtilty and moon¬ 
shine. These persons are of unequal strength, and do not all 
prosper. They complain that everything around them must 
be denied; and if feeble, it takes all their strength to deny, 
before they can begin to lead their own life. Grave seniors 
insist on their respect to this institution, and that usage ; to 
an obsolete history ; to some vocation, or college, or etiquette, 
or beneficiary, or charity, or morning or evening call, which 
they resist, as what does not concern them. But it costs such 
sleepless nights, alienations and misgivings, —they have so 
many moods about it; — these old guardians never change 
their minds ; they have but one mood on the subject, namely, 
that Antony is very perverse, — that it is quite as much as 
Antony can do, to assert his rights, abstain from what he 
thinks foolish, and keep his temper. He cannot help the re¬ 
action of this injustice in his own mind. He is braced up and 
stilted; all freedom and flowing genius, all sallies of wit and 
frolic nature are quite out of the question; it is well if he can 
keep from lying, injustice, and suicide. This is no time for 
gayety and grace. His strength and spirits are wasted in re¬ 
jection. But the strong spirits overpower those around them 
without effort. Their thought and emotion comes in like a flood, 
quite withdraws them from all notice of these carping critics; 
they surrender themselves with glad heart to the heavenly 
guide, and only by implication reject the clamorous nonsense 
of the hour. Grave seniors talk to the deaf, — church and 


THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 


193 


old book mumble and ritualize to an unheeding, preoccupied 
and advancing mind, and thus they by happiness of greater 
momentum lose no time, but take the right road at first. 

But all these of whom I speak are not proficients ; they are 
novices; they only show the road in which man should travel, 
when the soul has greater health and prowess. Yet let them 
feel the dignity of their charge, and deserve a larger power. 
Their heart is the ark in which the fire is concealed, which 
shall burn in a broader and universal flame. Let them obey 
the Genius then most when his impulse is wildest; then most 
when he seems to lead to uninhabitable deserts of thought and 
life ; for the path which the hero travels alone is the highway 
of health and benefit to mankind. What is the privilege and 
nobility of our nature, but its persistency, through its power 
to attach itself to what is permanent 1 

Society also has its duties in reference to this class, and 
must behold them with what charity it cdn. Possibly some 
benefit may yet accrue from them to the state. In our Me¬ 
chanics’ Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpen¬ 
ters’ planes, and baking-troughs, but also some few finer in¬ 
struments, — rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and 
in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be 
a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters 
of character ; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who betray 
the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander. 
Perhaps too there might be room for the exciters and monitors ; 
collectors of the heavenly spark with power to convey the 
electricity to others. Or, as the storm-tossed vessel at sea 
speaks the frigate or ‘ line packet ’ to learn its longitude, so it 
may not be without its advantage that we should now and 
then encounter rare and gifted men, to compare the points of 
our spiritual compass, and verify our bearings from superior 
chronometers. 

Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, 
when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute, 
or a subscription of stock, for an improvement in dress, or in 
dentistry, for a new house or a larger business, for a political 
party, or the division of an estate, — will you not tolerate one 
or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and 
principles" not marketable or perishable 1 Soon these improve¬ 
ments and mechanical inventions will be superseded ; these 
modes of living lost out of memory ; these cities rotted, ruined 
by war, by new inventions, by new seats of trade, or the geo- 

VOL. I. 9 M 


194 


THE TRANSCENDENTALISM 


logic changes : — all gone, like the shells which sprinkle the 
sea-beach with a white colony to-day, forever renewed to be for¬ 
ever destroyed. But the thoughts which these few hermits 
strove to proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, not only by 
what they did, but by what they forbore to do, shall abide in 
beauty and strength to reorganize themselves in nature, to in¬ 
vest themselves anew in other, perhaps higher endowed and 
happier mixed clay than ours, in fuller union with the sur¬ 
rounding system. 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


A Lecture read before the Mercantile Library Association, 
Boston, February 7 , 1844 . 




THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


C -' ENTLEMEK: — 

y It is remarkable that our people have their intellectual 
culture from one country, and their duties from another. This 
false state of things is newly in a way to be corrected. Amer¬ 
ica is beginning to assert itself to the senses and to the im¬ 
agination of her children, and Europe is receding in the same 
degree. This their reaction on education gives a new impor¬ 
tance to the internal improvements and to the politics of the 
country. Who has not been stimulated to reflection by the 
facilities now in progress of construction for travel and the 
transportation of goods in the United States 'l 

This rage for road-building is beneficent for America, where 
vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic poli¬ 
tics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the 
invention is to hold the Union stanch, whose days seemed 
already numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting 
representatives, judges, and officers across such tedious dis¬ 
tances of land and water. Not only is distance annihilated, but 
when, as now, the locomotive and the steamboat, like enormous 
shuttles, shoot every day across the thousand various threads of 
national descent and employment, and bind them fast in one 
web, an hourly assimilation goes forward, and there is no dan¬ 
ger that local peculiarities and hostilities should be preserved. 

1. But I hasten to speak of the utility of these improve¬ 
ments in creating an American sentiment. An unlooked-for 
consequence of the railroad is the increased acquaintance it 
has given the American people with the boundless resources 
of their own soil. If this invention has reduced England to a 
third of its size, by bringing people so much nearer, in this 
country it has given a new celerity to time, or anticipated by 
fifty years the planting of tracts of land, the choice of water- 



198 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


privileges, the working of mines, and other natural advantages. 
Railroad iron is a magician’s rod, in its power to evoke the 
sleeping energies of land and water. 

The railroad is but one arrow in our quiver, though it has 
great value as a sort of yard-stick, and surveyor’s line. The 
bountiful continent is ours, state on state, and territory on 
territory, to the waves of the Pacific sea; 

“ Our garden is the immeasurable earth, 

The heaven’s blue pillars are Medea’s house.” 

The task of surveying, planting, and building upon this 
immense tract requires an education and a sentiment com¬ 
mensurate thereto. A consciousness of this fact is beginning to 
take the place of the purely trading spirit and education which 
sprang up whilst all the population lived on the fringe of sea- 
coast. And even on the coast prudent men have begun to see 
that every American should be educated with a view to the 
values of land. The arts of engineering and of architecture are 
studied; scientific agriculture is an object of growing atten¬ 
tion ; the mineral riches are explored, limestone, coal, slate, 
and iron ; and the value of timber-lands is enhanced. 

Columbus alleged as a reason for seeking a continent in the 
West, that the harmony of nature required a great tract of 
land in the western hemisphere, to balance the known extent 
of land in the eastern; and it now appears that we must 
estimate the native values of this broad region to redress the 
balance of our own judgments, and appreciate the advantages 
opened to the human race in this country, which is our 
fortunate home. The land is the appointed remedy for what¬ 
ever is false and fantastic in our culture. The continent we 
inhabit is to be physic and food for our mind, as well as our 
body. The land, with its tranquillizing, sanative influences, is 
to repair the errors of a scholastic and traditional education, 
and bring us into just relations with men and things. 

The habit of living in the presence of these invitations of 
natural wealth is not inoperative; and this habit, combined 
with the moral sentiment which, in the recent years, has in¬ 
terrogated every institution, usage, and law, has, naturally, 
given a strong direction to the wishes and aims of active 
young men to withdraw from cities, and cultivate the soil. 
This inclination has appeared in the most unlooked-for quarters, 
in men supposed to be absorbed in business, and in those con¬ 
nected with the liberal professions. And since the walks of 
trade were crowded, whilst that of agriculture cannot easily 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


199 


be, inasmuch as the farmer who is not wanted by others can 
yet grow his own bread, whilst the manufacturer or the 
trader, who is not wanted cannot, — this seemed a happy 
tendency. For, beside all the moral benefit which we may 
expect from the farmer’s profession, when a man enters it con¬ 
siderately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, 
and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every ad¬ 
vantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for 
a man’s home could suggest. 

Meantime, with cheap land, and the pacific disposition of 
the people, everything invites to the arts of agriculture, of 
gardening, and domestic architecture. Public gardens, on 
the scale of such plantations in Europe and Asia, are now 
unknown to us. There is no feature of the old countries 
that strikes an American with more agreeable surprise 
than the beautiful gardens of Europe; such as the Boboli 
in Florence, the Villa Borghese in Borne, the Villa d’Este 
in Tivoli, the gardens at Munich, and at Frankfort on 
the Maine : works easily imitated here, and which might well 
make the land dear to the citizen, and inflame patriotism. It 
is the fine art which is left for us, now that sculpture, paint¬ 
ing, and religious and civil architecture have become effete, 
and have passed into second childhood. We have twenty de¬ 
grees of latitude wherein to choose a seat, and the new modes 
of travelling enlarge the opportunity of selection, by making 
it easy to cultivate very distant tracts, and yet remain in 
strict intercourse with the centres of trade and population. 
And the whole force of all the arts goes to facilitate the dec¬ 
oration of lands and dwellings. A garden has this advantage, 
that it makes it indifferent where you live. A well-laid gar¬ 
den makes the face of the country of no account; let that be 
low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beautiful abode 
worthy of man. If the landscape is pleasing, the garden 
shows it, —if tame, it excludes it. A little grove, which any 
farmer can find, or cause to grow near his house, will, in a few 
years make cataracts and chains of mountains quite unneces¬ 
sary to his scenery; and he is so contented with his alleys, 
woodlands, orchards, and river, that Niagara, and the Notch 
of the White Hills, and Nantasket Beach, are superfluities. 
And yet the selection of a fit house-lot has the same advantage 
over an indifferent one, as the selection to a given employ¬ 
ment of a man who has a genius for that work. In the last 
case, the culture of years will never make the most pains- 


200 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


taking apprentice his equal: no more will gardening give the 
advantage of a happy site to a house in a hole or on a pin¬ 
nacle. In America, we have hitherto little to boast in this 
kind. The cities drain the country of the best part of its 
population: the flower of the youth, of both sexes, goes into 
the towns, and the country is cultivated by a so much infe> 
rior class. The land — travel a whole day together — looks 
poverty-stricken, and the buildings plain and poor. In Europe, 
where society has an aristocratic structure, the land is full 
of men of the best stock, and the best culture, whose in¬ 
terest and pride it is to remain half the year on their estates, 
and to fill them with every convenience and ornament. Of 
course, these make model farms, and model architecture, and 
are a constant education to the eye of the surrounding popula¬ 
tion. Whatever events in progress shall go to disgust men 
with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, 
and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face 
of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the 
occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but 
hidden graces of the landscape. 

I look on such improvements, also, as directly tending to 
endear the land to the inhabitant. Any relation to the land, 
the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, 
generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, 
or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, 
or to his manufactory, values it less. The vast majority of 
the people of this country live by the land, and carry its 
quality in their manners and opinions. We in the Atlantic 
States, by position, have been commercial, and have, as I said, 
imbibed easily an European culture. Luckily for us, now 
that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, 
rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into 
the national mind, and we shall yet have an American genius. 
How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the 
people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise. Without 
looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which 
are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is 
inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land 
as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the san¬ 
ative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose 
new virtues for ages to come. 

2. In the second place, the uprise and culmination of the 
new and anti-feudal power of Commerce is the political fact 
of most significance to the American at this hour. 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


201 


We cannot look on the freedom of this country, in connection 
with its youth, without a presentiment that here shall laws and 
institutions exist on some scale of proportion to the majesty of 
nature. To men legislating for the area betwixt the two oceans, 
betwixt the snows and the tropics, somew T hat of the grandeur of 
nature will infuse itself into the code. A heterogeneous popula¬ 
tion crowding on all ships from all corners of the world to the 
great gates of North America, namely, Boston, New York, 
and New Orleans, and thence proceeding inward to the prairie 
and the mountains, and quickly contributing their private 
thought to the public opinion, their toll to the treasury, and 
their vote to the election, it cannot be doubted that the legis¬ 
lation of this country should become more catholic and cosmo¬ 
politan than that of any other. It seems so easy for America 
to inspire and express the most expansive and humane spirit; 
new-born, free, healthful, strong, the land of the laborer, of 
the democrat, of the philanthropist, of the believer, of the 
saint, she should speak for the human race. It is the country 
of the Future. From Washington, proverbially “the city of 
magnificent distances,” through all its cities, States, and Terri¬ 
tories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, 
and expectations. 

Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by 
which the human race is guided — the race never dying, the 
individual never spared — to results affecting masses and 
ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny 
is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in their 
calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or 
without their design. Only what is inevitable interests us, 
and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the 
course of things. That Genius has infused itself into nature. 
It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance 
in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason. All the 
facts in any part of nature shall be tabulated, and the results 
shall indicate the same security and benefit; so slight as to 
be hardly observable, and yet it is there. The sphere is flat¬ 
tened at the poles, and swelled at the equator; a form flowing 
necessarily from the fluid state, yet the form, the mathemati¬ 
cian assures us, required to prevent the protuberances of the 
continent, or even of lesser mountains cast up at any time by 
earthquakes, from continually deranging the axis of the earth. 
The census of the population is found to keep an invariable 
equality in the sexes, with a trifling predominance in favor 


202 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


of the male, as if to counterbalance the necessarily increased 
exposure of male life in war, navigation, and other accidents. 
Remark the unceasing effort throughout nature at somewhat 
better than the actual creatures : amelioration in nature , which 
alone permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind. The 
population of the world is a conditional population ; these are 
not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state 
of soils, gases, animals, and morals : the best that could yet 
live ; there shall be a better, please God. This Genius, or 
Destiny, is of the sternest administration, though rumors exist 
of its secret tenderness. It may be styled a cruel kindness, 
serving the whole even to the ruin of the member ; a terrible 
communist, reserving all profits to the community, without 
dividend to individuals. Its law is, you shall have everything 
as a member, nothing to yourself. For Nature is the noblest 
engineer, yet uses a grinding economy, working up all that is 
wasted to-day into to-morrow’s creation ; not a superfluous 
grain of sand, for all the ostentation she makes of expense 
and public works. It is because Nature thus saves and uses, 
laboring for the general, that we poor particulars are so crushed 
and straitened, and find it so hard to live. She flung us out 
in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair, or a paring of a nail, 
but instantly she snatches at the shred, and appropriates it to 
the general stock. Our condition is like that of the poor 
wolves : if one of the flock wound himself, or so much as limp, 
the rest eat him up incontinently. 

That serene Power interposes the check upon the caprices 
and officiousness of our wills. Its charity is not our charity. 
One of its agents is our will, but that which expresses itself in 
our will is stronger than our will. We are very forward to 
help it, but it will not be accelerated. It resists our med¬ 
dling, eleemosynary contrivances. We devise sumptuary and 
relief laws, but the principle of population is always reducing 
wages to the lowest pittance on which human life can be sus¬ 
tained. We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we 
would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfish¬ 
ness which hoards the corn for high prices, is the preventive 
of famine ; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than 
any legislation can be. We concoct eleemosynary systems, 
and it turns out that our charity increases pauperism. We 
inflate our paper currency, we repair commerce with unlim¬ 
ited credit, and are presently visited with unlimited bank¬ 
ruptcy. 


203 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

✓ 

It is easy to see that the existing generation are conspiring 
■with a beneficence, which, in its working for coming genera¬ 
tions, sacrifices the passing one, which infatuates the most self¬ 
ish men to act against their private interest for the public wel¬ 
fare. We build railroads, we know not for what or for whom ; 
but one thing is certain, that we who build will receive the 
very smallest share of benefit. Benefit will accrue ; they are 
essential to the country, but that will be felt not until we are 
no longer countrymen. We do the like in all matters : — 

“ Man’s heart the Almighty to the Future set 
By secret and inviolable springs.” 

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, 
we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for 
remote generations. We should be mortified to learn that the 
little benefit we chanced in our own persons to receive was the 
utmost they would yield. 

The history of commerce is the record of this beneficent 
tendency. The patriarchal form of government readily be¬ 
comes despotic, as each person may see in his own family. 
Fathers wish to be the fathers of the minds of their children, 
and behold with impatience a new character and way of think¬ 
ing presuming to show itself in their own son or daughter. 
This feeling, which all their love and pride in the powers of 
their children cannot subdue, becomes petulance and tyranny 
when the head of the clan, the emperor of an empire, deals with 
the same difference of opinion in his subjects. Difference of 
opinion is the one crime which kings never forgive. An em¬ 
pire is an immense egotism. “ I am the State,” said the 
French Louis. When a French ambassador mentioned to 
Paul of Russia, that a man of consequence in St. Petersburg 
was interesting himself in some matter, the Czar interrupted 
him : “ There is no man of consequence in this empire, but 
he with whom I am actually speaking; and so long only as I 
am speaking to him, is he of any consequence.” And Nicho¬ 
las, the present emperor, is reported to have said to his coun¬ 
cil : “ The age is embarrassed with new opinions ; rely on me, 
gentlemen, I shall oppose an iron will to the progress of liberal 
opinions.” 

It is easy to see that this patriarchal or family management 
gets to be rather troublesome to all but the papa; the scep¬ 
tre comes to be a crow-bar. And this unpleasant egotism, Feu¬ 
dalism opposes, and finally destroys. The king is compelled 
to call in the aid of his brothers and cousins, and remote rela- 


204 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


tions, to help him keep his overgrown house in order; and 
this club of noblemen always come at last to have a will of 
their own ; they combine to brave the sovereign, and call in 
the aid of the people. Each chief attaches as many followers 
as he can, by kindness, maintenance, and gifts; and as long 
as war lasts, the nobles, who must be soldiers, rule very well. 
But when peace comes, the nobles prove very whimsical and 
uncomfortable masters; their frolics turn out to be insulting 
and degrading to the commoner. Feudalism grew to be a 
bandit and brigand. 

Meantime Trade had begun to appear: Trade, a plant 
■which grows wherever there is peace, as soon as there is peace, 
and as long as there is peace. The luxury and necessity of 
the noble fostered it. And as quickly as men go to foreign 
parts, in ships or caravans, a new order of things springs up; 
new command takes place, new servants and new masters. 
Their information, their wealth, their correspondence, have 
made them quite other men than left their native shore. 
They are nobles now, and by another patent than the king’s. 
Feudalism had been good, had broken the power of the kings, 
and had some good traits of its own ; but it had grown mis¬ 
chievous, it was time for it to die, and, as they say of dying 
people, all its faults came out. Trade was the strong man 
that broke it down, and raised a new and unknown power in 
its place. It is a new agent in the world, and one of great 
function; it is a very intellectual force. This displaces phys¬ 
ical strength, and installs computation, combination, informa¬ 
tion, science, in its room. It calls out all force of a certain 
kind that slumbered in the former dynasties. It is now in 
the midst of its career. Feudalism is not ended yet. Our 
governments still partake largely of that element. Trade 
goes to make the governments insignificant, and to bring 
every kind of faculty of every individual that can in any 
manner serve any person, on sale. Instead of a huge Army 
and Navy, and Executive Departments, it converts Govern¬ 
ment into an Intelligence-Office, where every man may find 
what he wishes to buy, and expose what he has to sell, not 
only produce and manufactures, but art, skill, and intellectual 
and moral values. This is the good and this the evil of trade, 
that it would put everything into market, talent, beauty, vir¬ 
tue, and man himself. 

By this means, however, it has done its work. It has its 
faults, and will come to an end, as the others do. The 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


205 


philosopher and lover of man have much harm to say of 
trade ; but the historian will see that trade was the principle 
of Liberty ; that trade planted America and destroyed Feu¬ 
dalism ; that it makes peace and keeps peace, and it will abolish 
slavery. We complain of its oppression of the poor, and of 
its building up a new aristocracy on the ruins of the aristoc¬ 
racy it destroyed. But the aristocracy of trade has no per¬ 
manence, is not entailed, was the result of toil and talent, 
the result of merit of some kind, and is continually falling, 
like the waves of the sea, before new claims of the same 
sort. Trade is an instrument in the hands of that friendly 
Power which works for us in our own despite. We design it 
thus and thus; it turns out otherwise and far better. This 
beneficent tendency, omnipotent without violence, exists and 
works. Every line of history inspires a confidence that w r e 
shall not go far wrong; that things mend. That is the moral 
of all we learn, that it warrants Hope, the prolific mother of 
reforms. Our part is plainly not to throw ourselves across 
the track, to block improvement, and sit till we are stone, but 
to watch the uprise of successive mornings, and to conspire 
with the new works of new days. Government has been a 
fossil; it should be a plant. I conceive that the office of 
statute law should be to express, and not to impede the mind 
of mankind. New thoughts, new things. Trade was one 
instrument, but Trade is also but for a time, and must give 
way to somewhat broader and better, whose signs are already 
dawning in the sky. 

3. I pass to speak of the signs of that which is the sequel 
of trade. 

In consequence of the revolution in the state of society 
wrought by trade, government in our times is beginning to 
wear a clumsy and cumbrous appearance. We have already 
seen our way to shorter methods. The time is full of good 
signs. Some of them shall ripen to fruit. All this beneficent 
socialism is a friendly omen, and the swelling cry of voices for 
the education of the people, indicates that Government has 
other offices than those of banker and executioner. Witness 
the new movements in the civilized world, the Communism of 
France, Germany, and Switzerland ; the Trades’ Unions; the 
English League against the Corn Laws; and the whole Indus¬ 
trial Statistics , so called. In Paris, the blouse, the badge of 
the operative, has begun to make its appearance in the saloons. 
Witness, too, the spectacle of three Communities which have 


206 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


within a very short time sprung up within this Common¬ 
wealth, besides several others undertaken by citizens of 
Massachusetts within the territory of other States. These 
proceeded from a variety of motives, from an impatience of 
many usages in common life, from a wish for greater freedom 
than the manners ancf opinions of society permitted, but in 
great part from a feeling that the true offices of the State, the 
State had let fall to the ground; that in the scramble of par¬ 
ties for the public purse, the main duties of government were 
omitted, — the duty to instruct the ignorant, to supply the 
poor with work and with good guidance. These communists 
preferred the agricultural life as the most favorable condition 
for human culture ; but they thought that the farm, as we 
manage it, did not satisfy the right ambition of man. The 
farmer, after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, 
to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant. 
This result might well seem astounding. All this drudgery, 
from cock-crowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in 
mortgages and the auctioneer’s flag, and removing from bad 
to worse. It is time to have the thing looked into, and with 
a sifting criticism ascertained who is the fool. It seemed a 
great deal worse, because the farmer is living in the same 
town with men who pretend to know exactly what he wants. 
On one side, is agricultural chemistry, coolly exposing the 
nonsense of our spendthrift agriculture and ruinous expense 
of manures, and offering, by means of a teaspoonful of arti¬ 
ficial guano, to turn a sandbank into corn ; and, on the other, 
the farmer, not only eager for the information, but with bad 
crops and in debt and bankruptcy, for want of it. Here are 
Etzlers and mechanical projectors, who, with the Fourierists, 
undoubtingly affirm that the smallest union would make every 
man rich; and, on the other side, a multitude of poor men 
and women seeking work, and who cannot find enough to pay 
their board. The science is confident, and surely the poverty 
is real. If any means could be found to bring these two to¬ 
gether ! 

This was one design of the projectors of the Associations 
which are now making their first feeble experiments. They 
were founded in love, and in labor. They proposed, as you 
know, that all men should take a part in the manual toil, and 
proposed to amend the condition of men, by substituting har¬ 
monious for hostile industry. It was a noble thought of 
Fourier, which gives a favorable idea of his system, to dis- 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


207 


tinguish in his Phalanx a class as the Sacred Band, by whom 
whatever duties were disagreeable, »and likely to be omitted, 
were to be assumed. 

At least, an economical success seemed certain for the enter¬ 
prise, and that agricultural association must, sooner or later, 
fix the price of bread, and drive single farmers into association, 
in self-defence; as the great commercial and manufacturing 
companies had already done. The Community is only the 
continuation of the same movement which made the joint- 
stock companies for manufactures, mining, insurance, banking, 
and so forth. It has turned out cheaper to make calico by 
companies ; and it is proposed to plant corn, and to bake 
bread by companies. 

Undoubtedly, abundant mistakes will be made by these first 
adventurers, which will draw ridicule on their schemes. I 
think, for example, that they exaggerate the importance of a 
favorite project of theirs, that of paying talent and labor at 
one rate, paying all sorts of service at one rate, say ten cents 
the hour. They have paid it so ; but not an instant would a 
dime remain a dime. In one hand it became an eagle as it 
fell, and in another hand a copper cent. For the whole value 
of the dime is in knowing what to do with it. One man buys 
with it a land-title of an Indian, and makes his posterity 
princes ; or buys corn enough to feed the world ; or pen, ink, 
and paper, or a painter’s brush, by which he can communicate 
himself to the human race as if he were fire ; and the other 
buys barley candy. Money is of no value ; it cannot spend 
itself. All depends on the skill of the spender. Whether, 
too, the objection almost universally felt by such women in the 
community as were mothers, to an associate life, to a common 
table, and a common nursery, &e., setting a higher value on 
the private family with poverty, than on an association with 
wealth, will not prove insuperable, remains to be determined. 

But the Communities aimed at a higher success in securing 
to all their members an equal and thorough education. And 
on the whole, one may say, that aims so generous, and so 
forced on them by the times, will not be relinquished, even if 
these attempts fail, but will be prosecuted until they succeed. 

This is the value of the Communities ; not what they have 
done, but the revolution which they indicate as on the way. 
Yes, government must educate the poor man. Look across 
the country from any hillside around us, and the landscape 
seems to crave government. The actual differences of men 


208 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


must be acknowledged, and met with love and wisdom. These 
rising grounds which command the champaign below, seem to 
ask for lords, true lords, £a?fcf-lords, who understand the land 
and its uses, and the applicabilities of men, and whose govern¬ 
ment would be what it should, namely, mediation between 
want and supply. How gladly would each citizen pay a com¬ 
mission for the support and continuation of good guidance. 
None should be a governor who has not a talent for governing. 
Now many people have a native skill for carving out business 
for many hands; a genius for the disposition of affairs ; and 
are never happier than when difficult practical questions, 
which embarrass other men, are to be solved. All lies in light 
before them; they are in their element. Could any means be 
contrived to appoint only these ! There really seems a pro¬ 
gress towards such a state of things, in which this work shall 
be done by these natural workmen ; and this, not certainly 
through any increased discretion shown by the citizens at elec¬ 
tions, but by the gradual contempt into which official govern¬ 
ment falls, and the increasing disposition of private adventu¬ 
rers to assume its fallen functions. Thus the costly Post Office 
is likely to go into disuse before the private transportation- 
shop of Harnden and his competitors. The currency threatens 
to fall entirely into private hands. Justice is continually ad¬ 
ministered more and more by private reference, and not by 
litigation. We have feudal governments in a commercial age. 
It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, 
to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an archi¬ 
tect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has a talent for 
righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counsel¬ 
ling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, 
for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general bene¬ 
fit, let him in the county-town, or in Court Street, put up his 
sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor , Mr. Johnson, Working king. 

How can our young men complain of the poverty of things 
in New England, and not feel that poverty as a demand on 
their charity to make New England rich 1 ? Where is he who 
seeing a thousand men useless and unhappy, and making the 
wffiole region forlorn by their inaction, and conscious himself 
of possessing the faculty they want, does not hear his call to 
go and be their king ] 

We must have kings, and we must have nobles. Nature 
provides such in every society, — only let us have the real in¬ 
stead of the titular. Let us have our leading and our inspi- 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


209 


ration from the best. In every society some men are born to 
rule, and some to advise. Let the powers be well directed, 
directed by love, and they would everywhere be greeted with 
joy and honor. The chief is the chief all the world over, 
only not his cap and his plume. It is only their dislike of the 
pretender, which makes men sometimes unjust to the accom¬ 
plished man. If society were transparent, the noble would 
everywhere be gladly received and accredited, and would not 
be asked for his day’s work, but would be felt as benefit, inas¬ 
much as he \v T as noble. That were his duty and stint, — to 
keep himself pure and purifying, the leaven of his nation. I 
think I see place and duties for a nobleman in every society ; 
but it is not to drink wine and ride in a fine coach, but to 
guide and adorn life for the multitude by forethought, by 
elegant studies, by perseverance, self-devotion, and the re¬ 
membrance of the humble old friend, by making his life secret¬ 
ly beautiful. 

I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart, and be the 
nobility of this land. In every age of the world, there has 
been a leading nation, one of a more generous sentiment, 
whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interests 
of general justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, 
by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. Which 
should be that nation but -these States ! Which should lead 
that movement, if not New England! Who should lead the 
leaders, but the Young American 1 The people, and the world, 
is now suffering from the want of religion and honor in its 
public mind. In America, out of doors all seems a market; 
in doors, an air-tight stove of conventionalism. Everybody 
who comes into our houses savors of these habits; the men, 
of the market; the women, of the custom. I find no expres¬ 
sion in our state papers or legislative debate, in our lyceums 
or churches, specially in our newspapers, of a high national 
feeling, no lofty counsels that rightfully stir the blood. I 
speak of those organs which can be presumed to speak a pop¬ 
ular sense. They recommend conventional virtues, whatever 
will earn and preserve property; always the capitalist; the 
college, the church, the hospital, the theatre, the hotel, the 
road, the ship, of the capitalist, — whatever goes to secure, 
adorn, enlarge these, is good; what jeopardizes any of these 
is damnable. The ‘ opposition ’ papers, so called, are on the 
same side. They attack the great capitalist, but with the aim 
to make a capitalist of the poor man. The opposition is 

N 


210 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


against those who have money, from those who wish to have 
money. But who announces to us in journal or in pulpit, or 
in the street, the secret of heroism, 

“ Man alone 

Can perform the impossible? ” 

I shall not need to go into an enumeration of our national 
defects and vices which require this Order of Censors in the 
state. I might not set down our most proclaimed offences as 
the worst. It is not often the worst trait that occasions the 
loudest outcry. Men complain of their suffering, and not of 
the crime. I fear little from the bad effect of Repudiation ; 

I do not fear that it will spread. Stealing is a suicidal busi¬ 
ness ; you cannot repudiate but once. But the bold face and 
tardy repentance permitted to this local mischief reveal a pub¬ 
lic mind so preoccupied with the love of gain, that the com¬ 
mon sentiment of indignation at fraud does not act with its 
natural force. The more need of a withdrawal from the 
crowd, and a resort to the fountain of right, by the brave. 
The timidity of our public opinion, is our disease, or, shall I 
say, the publicness of opinion the absence of private opinion. 
Good-nature is plentiful, but we want justice, with heart of 
steel, to fight down the proud. The private mind has access 
to the totality of goodness and truth, that it may be a balance 
to a corrupt society; and to stand for the private verdict 
against popular clamor, is the office of the noble. If a hu¬ 
mane measure is propounded in behalf of the slave, or of the 
Irishman, or the Catholic, or for the succor of the poor, that 
sentiment, that project, will have the homage of the hero. 
That is his nobility, his oath of knighthood, to succor the 
helpless and oppressed; always to throw himself on the side - 
of weakness, of youth, of hope; on the liberal, on the expan¬ 
sive side, never on the defensive, the conserving, the timorous, 
the lock and bolt system. More than our good-will we may 
not be able to give. We have our own affairs, our own genius, 
which chains us to our proper work. We cannot give our life 
to the cause of the debtor, of the slave, or the pauper, as 
another is doing ; but to one thing we are bound, not to blas¬ 
pheme the sentiment and the work of that man, not to throw 
stumbling-blocks in the way of the abolitionist, the philanthro¬ 
pist, as the organs of influence and opinion are swift to do. It is 
for us to confide in the beneficent Supreme Power, and not to 
rely on our money, and on the state because it is the guard of 
money. At this moment, the terror of old people and of vicious 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


211 


people, is lest the Union of these States be destroyed : as if the 
Union had any other real basis than the good pleasure of a 
• majority of the citizens to be united. But the wise and just 
man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that he 
imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; 
and that if all went down, he and such as he would quite 
easily combine in a new and better constitution. Every great 
and memorable community has consisted of formidable indi¬ 
viduals, each of whom, like the Roman or the Spartan, lent 
his own spirit to the state and made it great. Yet only by 
the supernatural is a man strong'; nothing is so weak as an 
egotist. Nothing is mightier than we, when we are vehicles 
of a truth, before which the state and the individual are alike 
ephemeral. 

Gentlemen, the development of our American internal re¬ 
sources, the extension to the utmost of the commercial system, 
and the appearance of new moral causes which are to modify 
the state, are giving an aspect of greatness to the Future, 
which the imagination fears to open. One thing is plain for 
all men of common sense and common conscience, that here, 
here in America, is the home of man. After all the deductions 
'which are to be made for our pitiful politics, which stake every 
gravest national question on the silly die, whether James or 
whether Jonathan shall sit in the chair and hold the purse ; 
after all the deduction is made for our frivolities and insanities, 
there still remains an organic simplicity and liberty, which, 
when it loses its balance, redresses itself presently, which of¬ 
fers opportunity to the human mind not known in any other 
region. 

It is true, the public mind wants self-respect. We are full 
of vanity, of which the most signal proof is our sensitiveness 
to foreign and especially English censure. One cause of this 
is our immense reading, and that reading chiefly confined to 
the productions of the English press. It is also true, that, to 
imaginative persons in this country, there is somewhat bare 
and bald in our short history, and unsettled wilderness. They 
ask, who would live in a new country, that can live in an old ] 
and it is not strange that our youths and maidens should 
burn to see the picturesque extremes of an antiquated coun¬ 
try. But it is one thing to visit the pyramids and another 
to wish to live there. Would they like tithes to the clergy, 
and sevenths to the government, and horse-guards, and licensed 
press, and grief when a child is born, and threatening, starved 


212 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


weavers, and a pauperism now constituting one thirteenth of 
the population 1 Instead of the open future expanding here 
before the eye of every boy to vastness, would they like the* 
closing in of the future to a narrow slit of sky, and that fast 
contracting to be no future! One thing, for instance, the 
beauties of aristocracy, we commend to the study of the travel¬ 
ling American. The English, the most conservative people this 
side of India, are not sensible of the restraint, but an Ameri¬ 
can would seriously resent it. The aristocracy, incorporated 
by law and education, degrades life for the unprivileged classes. 
It is a questionable compensation to the embittered feeling of 
a proud commoner, the reflection that a fop, who, by the magic 
of title, paralyzes his arm, and plucks from him half the graces 
and rights of a man, is himself also an aspirant excluded with 
the same ruthlessness from higher circles, since there is no end 
to the wheels within wheels of this spiral heaven. Something 
may be pardoned to the spirit of loyalty when it becomes fantas¬ 
tic ; and something to the imagination, for the baldest life is sym¬ 
bolic. Philip II. of Spain rated his ambassador for neglecting 
serious affairs in Italy, whilst he debated some point of honor 
with the French ambassador: “You have left a business of 
importance for a ceremony.” The ambassador replied: “ Your 
Majesty’s self is but a ceremony.” In the East, where the 
religious sentiment comes in to the support of the aristocracy, 
and in the Romish Church also, there is a grain of sweetness 
in the tyranny; but in England, the fact seems to me intoler¬ 
able, what is commonly affirmed, that such is the transcendent 
honor accorded to wealth and birth, that no man of letters, be 
his eminence what it may, is received into the best society, 
except as a lion and a show. The English have many virtues, 
many advantages, and the proudest history of the world; but 
they need all, and more than all the resources of the past to 
indemnify a heroic gentleman in that country for the mortifi¬ 
cations prepared for him by the system of society, and which 
seem to impose the alternative to resist or to avoid it. That 
there are mitigations and practical alleviations to this rigor is 
not an excuse for the rule. Commanding worth, and personal 
power, must sit crowned in all companies, nor will extraordi¬ 
nary persons be slighted or affronted in any company of civil¬ 
ized men. But the system is an invasion of the sentiment of 
justice and the native rights of men, which, however decorat¬ 
ed, must lessen the value of English citizenship. It is for 
Englishmen to consider, not for us; we only say, let us live 


THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 


213 


in America, too thankful for our want of feudal institutions. 
Our houses and towns are like mosses and lichens, so slight 
and new ; hut youth is a fault of which we shall daily mend. 
This land, too, is as old as the Flood, and wants no ornament 
or privilege which nature could bestow. Here stars, here 
woods, here hills, here animals, here men abound, and the 
vast tendencies concur of a new order. If only the men are 
employed in conspiring with the designs of the Spirit who led 
us hither, and is leading us still, we shall quickly enough ad¬ 
vance out of all hearing of other’s censures, out of all regrets 
of our own, into a new and more excellent social state than 
history has recorded. 



s 


ESSAYS. 





HISTORY. 


♦ 


There is no great and no small 
To the Soul that maketh all: 

And where it cometh, all things are; 
And it cometh everywhere. 


VOL. I. 


10 



I am owner of the sphere, 

Of the seven stars and the solar year, 

Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain, 

Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakespeare’s strain. 


HISTORY. 


T HERE is one mind common to all individual men. Every¬ 
man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He 
that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman 
of the whole estate. What Plato has thought he may think ; 
what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any time has befallen 
any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this univer¬ 
sal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the 
only and sovereign agent. 

Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its 
genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is ex¬ 
plicable by nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, 
without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning 
to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which 
belongs to it in appropriate events. But the thought is always 
prior to the fact; all the facts of history pre-exist in the mind as 
laws. Each law in turn is madg by circumstances predominant, 
and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. A 
man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a 
thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, 
Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch 
after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are 
merely the applications of his manifold spirit to the manifold 
world. 

This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The 
Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is 
in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. 
There is a relation between the hours of our life and the cen¬ 
turies of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great 
repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a 
star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my 
body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal 



220 


HISTORY. 


forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages 
explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual 
man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. 
Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what 
great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer 
to national crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one 
man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another 
man, it is the key to that era. Every reform was once a pri¬ 
vate opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it 
will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must 
correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. 
We as we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest 
and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to 
some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing 
rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Csesar Borgia is as much an 
illustration of the mind’s powers and deprivations as what has 
befallen us. Each new law and political movement has mean¬ 
ing for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, ‘ Under 
this mask did my Proteus nature hide itself.’ This remedies 
the defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws 
our actions into perspective : and as crabs, goats, scorpions, 
the balance, and the water-pot lose their meanness when hung 
as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat 
in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Catiline. 

It is the universal nature which gives worth to particular 
men and things. Human life as containing this is mysterious 
and inviolable, and we hedge it round with penalties and laws. 
All laws derive hence their ultimate reason ; all express more 
or less distinctly some command of this supreme, illimitable 
essence. Property also holds of the soul, covers great spiritual 
facts, and instinctively we at first hold to it with swords and 
laws, and wide and complex combinations. The obscure con¬ 
sciousness of this fact is the light of all our day, the claim of 
claims; the plea for education, for justice, for charity, the 
foundation of friendship and love, and of the heroism and 
grandeur which belong to acts of self-reliance. It is remark¬ 
able that involuntarily we always read as superior beings. Uni¬ 
versal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest 
pictures — in the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the tri¬ 
umphs of will or of genius — anywhere lose our ear, anywhere 
make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men ; but 
rather is it true, that in their grandest strokes we feel most at 
home. All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of 


HISTORY. 


221 


a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. We 
sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great dis¬ 
coveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men ; — 
because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land 
was found, or the blow was struck for us , as we ourselves in 
that place would have done or applauded. 

We have the same interest in condition and character. We 
honor the rich, because they have externally the' freedom, 
power, and grace which we feel to be proper to man, proper to 
us. So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic, or Oriental 
or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, de¬ 
scribes his unattained but attainable, self. All literature writes 
the character of the wise man. Books, monuments, pictures, 
conversation, are portraits in which he finds the lineaments he 
is forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost 
him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves as by personal 
allusions. A true aspirant, therefore, never needs look for 
allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. He hears the 
commendation, not of himself, but more sweet, of that char¬ 
acter he seeks, in every word that is said concerning character, 
yea, further, in every fact and circumstance, — in the running 
river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, 
love flows from mute nature, from the mountains and the lights 
of the firmament. 

These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us 
use in broad day The student is to read history actively and 
not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the 
commentary. Thus compelled, the Muse of history will utter 
oracles, as never to those who do not respect themselves. I 
have no expectation that any man will read history aright, who 
thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose 
names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he 
is doing to-day. 

The world exists for the education of each man. There is 
no age or state of society or mode of action in history, to 
which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. Every¬ 
thing tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and 
yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can 
live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly at 
home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, 
but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the 
government of the world ; he must transfer the point of view 
from which history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens 


222 


HISTORY. 


and London to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is 
the court, and if England or Egypt have anything to say to 
him, he will try the case; if not, let them forever be silent. 
He must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield 
their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. The in¬ 
stinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the 
use we make of the signal narrations of history. Time dissi¬ 
pates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. No an¬ 
chor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon, 
Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and early Pome, have passed or are 
passing into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing 
still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who 
cares what the fact was, when we have made a constella¬ 
tion of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign 1 London and 
Paris and New York must go the same way. “ What is His¬ 
tory,” said Napoleon, “but a fable agreed upon!” This life 
of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, 
Colonization, Church, Court, and Commerce, as with so many 
flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make 
more account of them. I believe in Eternity. I can find 
Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and 
creative principle of each and of all eras in m^ own mind. 

We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history 
in our private experience, and verifying them here. All his¬ 
tory becomes subjective ; in other words, there is properly no 
history, only biography. Every mind must know the whole 
lesson for itself, — must go over the whole ground. What it 
does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. What 
the former age has epitomized into a formula or rule for ma- 
nipular convenience, it will lose all the good of verifying for 
itself, by means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere, some¬ 
time, it will demand and find compensation for that loss by 
doing the work itself. Ferguson discovered many things in 
astronomy which had long been known. The better for 
him. 

History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the 
state enacts indicates a fact in human nature ; that is all. We 
must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see 
how it could and must be. So stand before every public and 
private work; before an oration of Burke, before a victory of 
Napoleon, before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, 
of Marmaduke Robinson, before a French Reign of Terror, and 
a Salem hanging of witches, before a fanatic Revival, and the 


HISTORY. 


223 


Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We assume 
that we under like influence should be alike affected, and should 
achieve the like ; and we aim to master intellectually the steps, 
and reach the same height or the same degradation, that our 
fellow, our proxy, has done. 

All inquiry into antiquity — all curiosity respecting the 
Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, 
Mexico, Memphis — is the desire to do away this wild, savage, 
and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the 
Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy- 
pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end of the dif¬ 
ference between the monstrous work and himself. When he 
has satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it was made 
by such a person as he, so armed and so motived, and to ends 
to which he himself should also have worked, the problem is 
solved ; his thought lives along the whole line of temples and 
sphinxes and catacombs, passes through them all with satisfac¬ 
tion, and they live again to the mind, or are now. 

A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us, and not 
done by us. Surely it was by man, but we find it not in our 
man. But we apply ourselves to the history of its production. 
We put ourselves into the place and state of the builder. We 
remember the forest-dwellers, the first temples, the adherence 
to the first type, and the decoration of it as the wealth of the 
nation increased ; the value which is given to wood by carving 
led to the carving over the whole mountain of stone of a cathe¬ 
dral. When w r e have gone through this process, and added 
thereto the Catholic Church, its cross, its music, its processions, 
its Saints’ days and image-worship, we have, as it were, been 
the man that made the minster; we have seen how it could 
and must be. We have the sufficient reason. 

The difference between men is in their principle of associa¬ 
tion. Some men classify objects by color and size and other 
accidents of appearance ; others by intrinsic likeness, or by 
the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intel¬ 
lect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface 
differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all 
things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days 
holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and 
slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every 
plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, 
the variety of appearance. 

Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating 


224 


HISTORY. 


nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, why should we be 
such hard pedants, and magnify a few forms $ Why should 
we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure 1 The 
soul knows them not, and genius, obeying its law, knows how 
to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and 
in churches. Genius studies the casual thought, and far back, 
in the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, 
that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. Genius 
watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the 
metempsychosis of nature. Genius detects through the fly, 
through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, 
the constant individual; through countless individuals, the 
fixed species; through many species, the genus; through 
all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of 
organized life, the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud, 
which is always and never the same. She casts the same 
thought into troops of forms, as a poet makes twenty fables 
with one moral. Through the bruteness and toughness of 
matter, a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will. The 
adamant streams into soft but precise form before it, and 
whilst I look at it, its outline and texture are changed again. 
Nothing is so fleeting as form; yet never does it quite deny 
itself. In man we still trace the remains or hints of all that 
we esteem badges of servitude in the lower races; yet in him 
they enhance his nobleness and grace; as Io, in ^Eschylus, 
transformed to a cow, offends the imagination; but how 
changed, when as Isis in Egypt she meets Osiris-Jove a beauti¬ 
ful woman, with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the 
lunar horns as the splendid ornament of her brows ! 

The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity 
equally obvious. There is at the surface infinite variety of 
things ; at the centre there is simplicity of cause. How many 
are the acts of one man in which we recognize the same 
character ! Observe the sources of our information in respect 
to the Greek genius. We have the civil history of that people, 
as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have given 
it; a very sufficient account of Avhat manner of persons they 
were, and what they did. We have the same national mind 
expressed for us again in their literature , in epic and lyric 
poems, drama, and philosophy; a very complete form. Then 
we have it once more in their architecture , a beauty as of 
temperance itself, limited to the straight line and the square, 
— a budded geometry. Then we have it once again in 


HISTORY. 


225 


sculpture , the “ tongue on the balance of expression,” a multi¬ 
tude of forms in the utmost freedom of action, and never 
transgressing the ideal serenity ; like votaries performing some 
religious dance before the gods, and, though in convulsive 
pain or mortal combat, never daring to break the figure and 
decorum of their dance. Thus, of the genius of one remark¬ 
able people, we have a fourfold representation : and to the 
senses what more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble 
centaur, the peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last actions 
of Phocion 1 

Every one must have observed faces and forms which, with¬ 
out any resembling feature, make a like impression on the 
beholder. A particular picture or copy of verses, if it do not 
awaken the same train of images, will yet superinduce the 
same sentiment as some wild mountain walk, although the re¬ 
semblance is nowise obvious to the senses, but is occult and 
out of the reach of the understanding. Nature is an endless 
combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums 
the old well-known air through innumerable variations. 

Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout her 
works; and delights in startling us with resemblances in the 
most unexpected quarters. I have seen the head of an 
old sachem of the forest, which at once reminded the eye of 
a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the brow sug¬ 
gested the strata of the rock. There are men whose manners 
have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful 
sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of 
the earliest Greek art. And there are compositions of the 
same strain to be found in the books of all ages. What is 
Guido’s Rospigliosi Aurora but a morning thought, as the horses 
in it are only a morning cloud 1 If any one will but take 
pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally 
inclined in certain moods of mind, and those to which he is 
averse, he will see how deep is the chain of affinity. 

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in 
some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the 
outlines of its form merely, — but, by watching for a time his 
motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature, and can 
then draw him at will in every attitude. So Roos “ entered 
into the inmost nature of a sheep.” I knew a draughtsman 
employed in a public survey, who found that he could not 
sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first ex¬ 
plained to him. In a certain state of thought is the common 
10* o 


226 


HISTORY. 


origin of very diverse works. It is the spirit and not the fact 
that is identical. By a deeper apprehension, and not pri¬ 
marily by a painful acquisition of many manual skills, the art¬ 
ist attains the power of awakening other souls to a given 
activity. 

It has been said, that “ common souls pay with what they do; 
nobler souls with that which they are.” And why 1 Because 
a profound nature awakens in us by its actions and words, by 
its very looks and manners, the same power and beauty that a 
gallery of sculpture, or of pictures, addresses. 

Civil and natural history, the history of art and of litera¬ 
ture, must be explained from individual history, or must re¬ 
main words. There is nothing but is related to us, nothing 
that does not interest us, — kingdom, college, tree, horse, or 
iron shoe, the roots of all things are in man. Santa Croce 
and the Dome of St. Peter’s are lame copies after a divine 
model. Strasburg Cathedral is a material counterpart of the 
soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true poem is the poet’s 
mind ; the true ship is the shipbuilder. In the man, could we 
lay him open, we should see the reason for the last flourish 
and tendril of his work ; as every spine and tint in the sea- 
shell pre-exist in the secreting organs of the fish. The wdiole 
of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine man¬ 
ners shall pronounce your name with all the ornament that 
titles of nobility could ever add. 

The trivial experience of every day is always verifying some 
old prediction to us, and converting into things the words and 
signs which we had heard and seen without heed. A lady, 
with whom I was riding in the forest, said to me, that the 
woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit 
them suspended their deeds until the wayfarer has passed on¬ 
ward : a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of 
the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet. 
The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds 
at midnight has been present like an archangel at the creation 
of light and of the world. I remember one summer day, in 
the fields, my companion pointed out to me a broad cloud, 
which might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the horizon, 
quite accurately in the form of a cherub as painted over 
churches, — a round block in the centre, which it was easy to 
animate with eyes and mouth, supported on either side by 
wide-stretched symmetrical wings. What appears once in the 
atmosphere may appear often, and it was undoubtedly the 


HISTORY. 


227 


archetype of that familiar ornament. I have seen in the sky 
a chain of summer lightning which at once showed to me that 
the Greeks drew from nature when they painted the thunder¬ 
bolt in the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along the 
sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the idea of the 
common architectural scroll to abut a tower. 

By surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances, 
we invent anew the orders and the ornaments of architecture, 
as we see how each people merely decorated its primitive 
abodes. The Doric temple preserves the semblance of the 
wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. The Chinese pagoda 
is plainly a Tartar tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples 
still betray the mounds and subterranean houses of their fore¬ 
fathers. “ The custom of making houses and tombs in the 
living rock,” says Heeren, in his Researches on the Ethiopians, 
“ determined very naturally the principal character of the Nu¬ 
bian Egyptian architecture to the colossal form which it as¬ 
sumed. In these caverns, already prepared by nature, the 
eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and masses, so 
that when art came to the assistance of nature, it could not 
move on a small scale without degrading itself. What would 
statues of the usual size, or neat porches and wings, have been, 
associated with those gigantic halls before which only Colossi 
could sit as watchmen, or lean on the pillars of the interior 1 ” 

The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation 
of the forest trees with all their boughs to a festal or solemn 
arcade, as the bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the 
green withes that tied them. No one can walk in a road cut 
through pine woods, without being struck with the architec¬ 
tural appearance of the grove, especially in winter, Avhen the 
barrenness of all other trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. 
In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the 
origin of the stained glass window, with which the Gothic 
cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the Avestern sky seen 
through the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor 
can any lover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the 
English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest overpowered 
the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw, and plane 
still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, 
oak, pine, fir, and spruce. 

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by 
the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of 
granite blooms, into an eternal flower, with the lightness and 


228 


HISTORY. 


delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspec¬ 
tive, of vegetable beauty. 

In like manner, all public facts are to be individualized, all 
private facts are to be generalized. Then at once History be¬ 
comes fluid and true, and Biography deep and sublime. As 
the Persian imitated in the slender shafts and capitals of his 
architecture the stem and flower of the lotus and palm, so the 
Persian court in its magnificent era never gave over the no¬ 
madism of its barbarous tribes, but travelled from Ecbatana, 
where the spring was spent, to Susa in summer, and to Baby¬ 
lon for the winter. 

In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and 
Agriculture are the two antagonist facts. The geography of 
Asia and of Africa necessitated a nomadic life. But the 
nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil, or the ad¬ 
vantages of a market, had induced to build towns. Agricul¬ 
ture, therefore, was a religious injunction, because of the perils 
of the state from nomadism. And in these late and civil 
countries of England and America, these propensities still 
fight out the old battle in the nation and in the individual. 
The nomads of Africa were constrained to wander by the at¬ 
tacks of the gadfly, which drives the cattle mad, and so com¬ 
pels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy season, and to drive off 
the cattle to the higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia 
follow the pasturage from month to month. In America and 
Europe, the nomadism is of trade and curiosity; a progress, 
certainly, from the gadfly of Astaboras to the Anglo and Italo- 
mania of Boston Bay. Sacred cities, to w r hich a periodical 
religious pilgrimage was enjoined, or stringent laws and cus¬ 
toms, tending to invigorate the national bond, were the check 
on the old rovers ; and the cumulative values of long residence 
are the restraints on the itineracy of the present day. The 
antagonism of the two tendencies is not less active in individ¬ 
uals, as the love of adventure or the love of repose happens 
to predominate. A man of rude health and flowing spirits has 
the faculty of rapid domestication, lives in his wagon, and 
roams through all latitudes as easily as a Calmuc. At sea, or 
in the forest, or in the snow, he sleeps as warm, dines with as 
good appetite, and associates as happily, as beside his own 
chimneys. Or perhaps his facility is deeper seated, in the in¬ 
creased range of his faculties of observation, which yield him 
points of interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The 
pastoral nations were needy and hungry to desperation ; and 


HISTORY. 


229 


this intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind, 
through the dissipation of power on a miscellany of objects. 
The home-keeping wit, on the other hand, is that continence 
or content which finds all the elements of life in its own soil; 
and which has its own perils of monotony and deterioration, 
if not stimulated by foreign infusions. 

Everything the individual sees without him corresponds to 
his states of mind, and everything is in turn intelligible to 
him, as his onward thinking leads him into the truth to which 
that fact or series belongs. 

The primeval world,— the Fore-World, as the Germans say, 
— I can dive to it in myself as well as grope for it with re¬ 
searching fingers in catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs 
and torsos of ruined villas. 

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in 
Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from 
the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the 
Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later % What 
but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian 
period. The Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the 
perfection of the senses, — of the spiritual nature unfolded in 
strict unity with the body. In it existed those human forms 
which supplied the sculptor with his models of Hercules, 
Phoebus, and Jove; not like the forms abounding in the streets 
of modern cities, wherein the face is a confused blur of fea¬ 
tures, but composed of incorrupt, sharply defined, and symmet¬ 
rical features, whose eye-sockets are so formed that it would 
be impossible for such eyes to squint, and take furtive glances 
on this side and on that, but they must turn the whole head. 
The manners of that period are plain and fierce. The rever¬ 
ence exhibited is for personal qualities, courage, address, self- 
command, justice, strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad 
chest. Luxury and elegance are not known. A sparse popula¬ 
tion and want make every man his own valet, cook, butcher, 
and soldier, and the habit of supplying his own needs educates 
the body to wonderful performances. Such are the Agamem¬ 
non and Diomed of Homer, and not far different is the picture 
Xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the Retreat 
of the Ten Thousand. “After the army had crossed the 
river Teleboas in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the 
troops lay miserably on the ground covered with it. But 
Xenophon arose naked, and, taking an axe, began to split 
wood; whereupon others rose and did the like.” Throughout 


230 


HISTORY. 


his army exists a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel 
for plunder, they wrangle with the generals on each new order, 
and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued as any, and sharper-tongued 
than most, and so gives as good as he gets. Who does not 
see that this is a gang of great boys, with such a code of 
honor and such lax discipline as great boys have 1 

The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all 
the old literature, is, that the persons speak simply, — speak 
as persons who have great good sense without knowing it, be¬ 
fore yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit 
of the mind. Our admiration of the antique is not admiration 
of the old, but of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective, 
but perfect in their senses and in their health, with the finest 
physical organization in the world. Adults acted with the sim¬ 
plicity and grace of children. They made vases, tragedies, 
and statues, such as healthy senses should, — that is, in good 
taste. Such things have continued to be made in all ages, 
and are now, wherever a healthy physique exists; but as a 
class, from their superior organization, they have surpassed all. 
They combine the energy of manhood with the engaging un¬ 
consciousness of childhood. The attraction of these manners 
is that they belong to man, and are known to every man in 
virtue of his being once a child; besides that there are always 
individuals who retain these characteristics. A person of child¬ 
like genius and inborn energy is still a Greek, and revives our 
love of the Muse of Hellas. I admire the love of nature in the 
Philoctetes. In reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the 
stars, rocks, mountains, and waves, I feel time passing away as 
an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the identity of his 
thought. The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as I. 
The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely 
as they meet mine. Then the vaunted distinction between 
Greek and English, between Classic and Romantic schools, 
seems superficial and pedantic. When a thought of Plato be¬ 
comes a thought to me, — when a truth that fired the soul of 
Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two 
meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the 
same hue, and do, as it were, run into one, why should I 
measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian 
years ? 

The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age 
of chivalry, and the days of maritime adventure and circum¬ 
navigation by quite parallel miniature experiences of his own. 


HISTORY. 


231 


To the sacred history of the world, he has the same key. When 
the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely 
echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, 
he then pierces to the truth through all the confusion of tradi¬ 
tion and the caricature of institutions. 

Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who dis¬ 
close to us new facts in nature. I see that men of God have, 
from time to time, walked among men and made their commis¬ 
sion felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer. 
Hence, evidently, the tripod, the priest, the priestess inspired 
by the divine afflatus. 

Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They can¬ 
not unite him to history, or reconcile him with themselves. 
As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live 
holily, their own piety explains every fact, every word. 

How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, of Me¬ 
nu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind. I cannot 
find any antiquity in them. They are mine as much as theirs. 

I have seen the first monks and anchorets without crossing 
seas or centuries. More than once some individual has ap¬ 
peared to me with such negligence of labor and such com¬ 
manding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, begging in 
the name of God, as made good to the nineteenth century 
Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins. 

The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, Brah¬ 
min, Druid, and Inca, is expounded in the individual’s private 
life. The cramping influence of a hard formalist on a young 
child in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the under¬ 
standing, and that without producing indignation, but only 
fear and obedience, and even much s}^mpathy with the tyran¬ 
ny, — is a familiar fact explained to the child when he becomes 
a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is him¬ 
self a child tyrannized over by those names and words and 
forms, of whose influence he was merely the organ to the 
youth. The fact teaches him how Belus was worshipped, and 
how the Pyramids were built, better than the discovery by 
Champollion of the names of all the workmen and the cost of 
every tile. He finds Assyria and the Mounds of Cholula at 
his door, and himself has laid the courses. 

Again, in that protest which each considerate person makes 
against the superstition of his times, he repeats step for step 
the part of old reformers, and in the search after truth finds 
like them new perils to virtue. He learns again what moral 


232 


HISTORY. 


vigor is needed to supply the girdle of a superstition. A great 
licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation. How 
many times in the history of the world has the Luther of the 
day had to lament the decay of piety in his own household ! 
“ Doctor,” said his wife to Martin Luther, one day, “ how is 
it that, whilst subject to papacy, we prayed so often and with 
such fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and 
very seldom 1 ” 

The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has 
in literature, — in all fable as well as in all history. He finds 
that the poet was no odd fellow who described strange and im¬ 
possible situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen a 
confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biog¬ 
raphy he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted 
down before he was born. One after another he comes up in 
his private adventures with every fable of iEsop, of Homer, of 
Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with 
his own head and hands. 

The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations 
of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. 
What a range of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has 
the story of Prometheus ! Beside its primary value as the 
first chapter of the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly 
veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts, and 
the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of religion with 
some closeness to the faith of later ages. Prometheus is the 
Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friend of man ; stands 
between the unjust “justice” of the Eternal Father and the 
race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their account. 
But where it departs from the Calvinistic Christianity, and 
exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it represents a state of mind 
which readily appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is 
taught in a crude, objective form, and which seems the self- 
defence of man against this untruth, namely, a discontent 
with the believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that the 
obligation of reverence is onerous. It would steal, if it could, 
the fire of the Creator, and live apart from him, and indepen¬ 
dent of him. The Prometheus Vinctus is the romance of 
scepticism. Not less true to all time are the details of that 
stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the 
poets. When the gods come among men, they are not known. 
Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakespeare were not. Antteus 
was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules, but every time he 


HISTORY. 


233 


touched his mother earth, his strength was renewed. Man 
is the broken giant, and, in all his weakness, both his body 
and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with 
nature. The power of music, the power of poetry to unfix, 
and, as it were, clap wings to solid nature, interprets the rid¬ 
dle of Orpheus. The philosophical perception of identity 
through endless mutations of form makes him know the 
Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept yesterday, 
who slept last night like a corpse, and this morning stood and 
ran 1 And what see I on any side but the transmigrations of 
Proteus ? I can symbolize my thought by using the name of 
any creature, of any fact, because every creature is man agent 
or patient. Tantalus is but a name for you and me. Tanta¬ 
lus means the impossibility of drinking the waters of thought 
which are always gleaming and waving within sight of the 
soul. J"he transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it 
were ; but men and women are only half human. Every 
animal of the barn-yard, the field, and the forest, of the earth 
and of the waters that are under the earth, has contrived to 
get a footing and to leave the print of its features and form 
in some one or other of these upright, heaven-facing speak¬ 
ers. Ah ! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul, — ebbing down¬ 
ward into the forms into whose habits thou hast now for many 
years slid. As near and proper to us is also that old fable of 
the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the roadside and put rid¬ 
dles to every passenger. If the man could not answer, 
she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, the 
Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless flight of 
winged facts or events ! In splendid variety these changes 
come, all putting questions to the human spirit. Those men 
who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or ques¬ 
tions of time, serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize 
over them, and make the men of routine the men of sense, in 
whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark 
of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is 
true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the do¬ 
minion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race, remains 
fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly 
and supple into their places; they know their master, and the 
meanest of them glorifies him. 

See in Goethe’s Helena the same desire that every word 
should be a thing. These figures, he would say, these Chi- 
rons, Griffins, Phorkyas, Helen, and Leda, are somewhat, and 


234 


HISTORY. 


do exert a specific influence on the mind. So far then are 
they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the first Olympiad. 
Much revolving them, he writes out freely his humor, and 
gives them body to his own imagination. And although that 
poem be as vague and fantastic as a dream, yet is it much 
more attractive than the more regular dramatic pieces of the 
same author, for the reason that it operates a wonderful relief 
to the mind from the routine of customary images, — awakens 
the reader’s invention and fancy by the wild freedom of the 
design, and by the unceasing succession of brisk shocks of 
surprise. 

The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature of the 
bard, sits on his neck and writes through his hand; so that 
when he seems to vent a mere caprice and wild romance, the 
issue is an exact allegory. Hence Plato said that “ poets ut¬ 
ter great and wise things which they do not themselve§ under¬ 
stand.” All the fictions of the Middle Age explain themselves 
as a masked or frolic expression of that which in grave ear¬ 
nest the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic, and all 
that is ascribed to it, is a deep presentiment of the powers of 
science. The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the 
power of subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues 
of minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, are the ob¬ 
scure efforts of the mind in a right direction. The preter¬ 
natural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual youth, and 
the like, are alike the endeavor of the human spirit “ to bend 
the shows of things to the desires of the mind.” 

In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul, a garland and a rose 
bloom on the head of her wdio is faithful, and fade on the brow 
of the inconstant. In the story of the Boy and the Mantle, 
even a mature reader may be surprised with a glow of virtuous 
pleasure at the triumph of the gentle Gene!as; and, indeed, 
all the postulates of elfin annals, —that the fairies do not like 
to be named ; that their gifts are capricious and not to be 
trusted ; that who seeks a treasure must not speak ; and the 
like, — I find true in Concord, however they might be in Coin- 
wall or Bretagne. 

Is it otherwise in the newest romance 1 I read the Bride of 
Lammermoor. Sir William Ashton is a mask for a vulgar 
temptation, Itavenswood Castle a fine name for proud poverty, 
and the foreign mission of state only a Bunyan disguised for 
honest industry. We may all shoot a wild bull that would 
toss the good and beautiful, by fighting down the unjust and 


HISTORY. 


235 


sensual. Lucy Ashton is another name for fidelity, which 
is always beautiful and always liable to calamity in this 
world. 

But along with the civil and metaphysical history of man, 
another history goes daily forward, — that of the external 
world, — in which he is not less strictly implicated. He is the 
compend of time; he is also the correlative of nature. His 
power consists in the multitude of his affinities, in the fact 
that his life is intertwined with the whole chain of organic and 
inorganic being. In old Rome the public roads beginning at 
the Forum proceeded north, south, east, west, to the centre 
of every province of the empire, making each market-town of 
Persia, Spain, and Britain pervious to the soldiers of the capi¬ 
tal : so out of the human heart go, as it were, highways to the 
heart of every object in nature, to reduce it under the domin¬ 
ion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, 
whose flower and fruitage is the world. His faculties refer to 
natures out of him, and predict the world he is to inhabit, as 
the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings of 
an eagle in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live without a 
world. Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his faculties find 
no men to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and 
he would beat the air and appear stupid. Transport him to 
large countries, dense population, complex interests, and an¬ 
tagonist power, and you shall see that the man Napoleon, 
bounded, that is, by such a profile and outline, is not the vir¬ 
tual Napoleon. This is but Talbot’s shadow; 

“ His substance is not here: 

For what you see is but the smallest part 
And least proportion of humanity; 

But were the whole frame here, 

It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, 

Your roof were not sufficient to contain it.” 

Henry VI. 

Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. Newton 
and Laplace need myriads of ages and thick-strewn celestial 
areas. One may say a gravitating solar system is already 
prophesied in the nature of Newton’s mind. Not less does 
the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from childhood exploring 
the affinities and repulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of 
organisation. Does not the eye of the human embryo predict 
the light! the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of har¬ 
monic sound ] Do not the constructive fingers of Watt, Ful- 


236 


HISTORY. 


ton, Whittemore, Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, and tern- 
perable texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, and 
wood 1 Do not the lovely attributes of the maiden child pre¬ 
dict the refinements and decorations of civil society 1 Here 
also we are reminded of the action of man on man. A mind 
might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self- 
knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day. 
Who knows himself before he has been thrilled with indigna¬ 
tion at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has 
shared the throb of thousands in a national exultation or alarm 1 
No man can antedate his experience, or guess what faculty or 
feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw 
to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for 
the first time. 

I will not now go behind the general statement to explore 
the reason of this correspondency. Let it suffice that in the 
light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and 
that nature is its correlative, History is to be read and 
written. 

Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its 
treasures for each pupil. He, too, shall pass through the whole 
cycle of experience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of 
nature. History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk 
incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me 
by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have 
read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived. 
A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the 
poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over 
with wonderful events and experiences; his own form and fea¬ 
tures by their exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. 
I shall find in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the Age 
of Gold; the Apples of Knowledge; the Argonautic Expedi¬ 
tion ; the calling of Abraham ; the building of the Temple; 
the Advent of Christ; Dark Ages; the Revival of Letters; 
the Reformation; the discovery of new lands ; the opening of 
new sciences, and new regions in man. He shall be the priest 
of Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the blessing 
of the morning stars and all the recorded benefits of heaven and 
earth. 

Is there somewhat overweening in this claim h Then I re¬ 
ject all I have written, for what is the use of pretending to 
know what we know not 1 But it is the fault of our rhetoric 
that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie 


HISTORY. 


237 


some other. I hold our actual knowledge very cheap. Hear 
the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the fungus 
under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know sympa¬ 
thetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life ? As old 
as the Caucasian man,—perhaps older,—these creatures have 
kept their counsel beside him, and there is no record of any 
word or sign that has passed from one to the other. What 
connection do the books show between the fifty or sixty chem¬ 
ical elements and the historical eras'? Nay, what does history 
yet record of the metaphysical annals of man? What light does 
it shed on those mysteries which we hide under the names Death 
and Immortality ? Yet every history should be written in a 
wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at 
facts as symbols. I am ashamed to see what a shallow village 
tale our so-called History is. How many times we must say 
Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know 
of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to 
these neighboring systems of being ? Nay, what food or expe¬ 
rience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, 
for the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, 
the porter ? 

Broader and deeper we must w T rite our annals, — from an 
ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sana¬ 
tive conscience, — if we would truly express our central and 
wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfish¬ 
ness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Al¬ 
ready that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but 
the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. 
The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer’s boy 
stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than 
the dissector or the antiquary. 




















ELF-RELIANCE. 

“ Ne te qusesiveris extra.” 


“ Man is his own star; and the soul that can 
Render an honest and a perfect man, 

Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 

Nothing to him tails early or too late. 

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill. 

Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.” 

Epilogue, to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune, 




Cast the bartling on the rocks, 
Suckle him with the she-wolf s teat 
Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
Power and speed be hands and feet. 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


I READ the other day some verses written by an eminent 
painter which were original and not conventional. The 
soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject 
be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value 
than any thought they may contain. To believe your own 
thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private 
heart is true for all men, —that is genius. Speak your latent 
conviction, and it shall be the universal sense ; for the inmost 
in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is 
rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit 
w r e ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at 
naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but 
what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch 
that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, 
more than the lustre of the firmament of hards and sages. 
Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is 
his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected 
thoughts : they come back to us with a certain alienated maj¬ 
esty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us 
than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous im¬ 
pression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the 
whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a 
stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we 
have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to 
take with shame our own opinion from another. 

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at 
the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is sui¬ 
cide ; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his 
portion ; that though the wide universe is full of good, no ker¬ 
nel of nourishing corn can come to. him but through his toil 
VOL. i. 11 p 



242 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 
The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none 
but he knows what that is which he can do nor does he know 
until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, 
one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. 
This sculpture in the memory is not without pre-established 
harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that 
it might testify of that particular ray. "W e but half express 
ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us 
represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of 
good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have 
his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and 
gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his 
best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him 
no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the 
attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no inven¬ 
tion, no hope. 

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, 
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. 
Great men have always done so, and confided themselves child¬ 
like to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that 
the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working 
through their hands, predominating in all tlieir being. And 
we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the 
same transcendent destiny ; and not minors and invalids in 
a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, 
but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty 
effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. 

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the 
face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes ! That 
divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because 
our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed 
to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being w T hole, their 
eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, 
w r e are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all con¬ 
form to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out 
of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed 
youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy 
and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims 
not to be put by, if it w’ill stand by itself. Do not think the 
youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. 
Hark ! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and em- 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


243 


phatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contempora¬ 
ries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us 
seniors very unnecessary. 

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and 
would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to con¬ 
ciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy 
is in the parlor what the pit is m the playhouse ; independent, 
irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and 
facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, 
in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, 
silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never ^about 
consequences, about interests : he gives an independent, gen¬ 
uine verdict. You must court him : he does not court you. 
But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his conscious¬ 
ness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he 
is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred 
of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. 
There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into 
his neutrality ! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having 
observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiassed, 
unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. 
He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being 
seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts 
into the ear of men, and put them in fear. 

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they 
grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society 
everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one 
of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which 
the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each 
shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. 
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its 
aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and 
customs. 

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who 
would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the 
name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Noth¬ 
ing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Ab¬ 
solve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the 
world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was 
prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to im¬ 
portune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On 
my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, 
if I live wholly from within 1 my friend suggested : “ But 


244 


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these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I re¬ 
plied : “ They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the 
Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be 
sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but 
names very readily transferable to that or this ; the only right 
is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against 
it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposi¬ 
tion, as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he. I 
am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and 
names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent 
and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is 
right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude 
truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of phi¬ 
lanthropy, shall that pass ? If an angry bigot assumes this 
bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last 
news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him : ‘ Go love 
thy infant; love thy 'wood-chopper : be good-natured and mod¬ 
est : have that grace; and never varnish your hard, unchari¬ 
table ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a 
thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.’ Rough 
and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer 
than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some 
edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be 
preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love -when 
that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife 
and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the 
lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better 
than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explana¬ 
tion. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I ex¬ 
clude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man 
did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situ¬ 
ations. Are they my poor ? I tell thee, thou foolish philan¬ 
thropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to 
such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not be¬ 
long. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual 
affinity I am bought and sold ; for them I will go to prison, if 
need be ; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the edu¬ 
cation at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to 
the vain end to which many now stand • alms to sots ; and the 
thousand-fold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame 
I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar 
which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. 

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


245 


than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do 
what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or 
charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily 
non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apol¬ 
ogy or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids 
and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. 
I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and 
not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a 
lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should 
be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, 
and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence 
that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to 
his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference 
whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned ex¬ 
cellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have 
intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually 
am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance 
of my fellows any secondary testimony. 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the peo¬ 
ple think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intel¬ 
lectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between great¬ 
ness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always 
find those who thipk they know what is your duty better than 
you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s 
opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the 
great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with per¬ 
fect sweetness the independence of solitude. 

The objection to conforming to usages that have become 
dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time 
and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain 
a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible society, vote with 
a great party either for the government or against it, spread 
your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I 
have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of 
course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But 
do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you 
shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind- 
man’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I 
anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his 
text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his 
church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he 
say a new and spontaneous word 1 Do I not know that, with 
all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institu- 


246 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


tion, he will do no such thing 1 Do I not know that he is 
pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — the permitted 
side, not as a man, but as a parish minister ? He is a retained 
attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affec¬ 
tation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or 
another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of 
these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them 
not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in 
all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their 
two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that 
every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to 
begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to 
equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we ad¬ 
here. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire 
by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a morti¬ 
fying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak 
itself also in the general history; I mean “ the foolish face of 
praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where 
we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does 
not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but 
moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the out¬ 
line of the face with the most disagreeable sensation. 

For non-conformity the world whips you vyith its displeasure. 
And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. 
The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in 
the friend’s parlor. If this aversation had its origin in con¬ 
tempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with 
a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like 
their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off 
as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discon¬ 
tent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate 
and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows 
the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their 
rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very 
vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the 
indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the 
poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies 
at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs 
the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a 
trifle of no concernment. 

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our con¬ 
sistency ; a reverence for our past act or word, because the 
eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than 
our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


247 


But why should you keep your head over your shoulder ? 
Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contra¬ 
dict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place 1 
Suppose you should contradict yourself; Tvhat then ? It 
seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory 
alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the 
past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live 
ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied 
personality to the Deity : yet when the devout motions of the 
soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should 
clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as 
Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored 
by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With con¬ 
sistency a great sonl has simply nothing to do. He may as 
well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak 
what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what 
to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict 
everything you said to-day. — 1 Ah, so you shall be sure to be 
misunderstood V — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood % 
Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and 
Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every 
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is 
to be misunderstood. 

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of 
his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the in¬ 
equalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the 
curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and 
try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; 
.— read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same 
thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows 
me, let me record day by day my honest thought without 
prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found sym¬ 
metrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should 
smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swal¬ 
low over my window should interweave that thread or straw he 
carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. 
Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they 
communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do 
not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. 

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, 
so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of 
one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they 


248 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at 
a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. 
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred 
tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straight¬ 
ens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will 
explain itself, and will explain your other* genuine actions. 
Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you 
have already done singly will justify you how. Greatness 
appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do 
right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before 
as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. 
Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force 
of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue 
work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the 
heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagina¬ 
tion 1 The consciousness of a train of great days and victories 
behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. 
He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it 
which throws thunder into Chatham’s voice, and dignity into 
Washington’s port, and America into Adams’s eye. Honor is 
venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always 
ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to¬ 
day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap 
for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, 
and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in 
a young person. 

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity 
and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous 
henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a 
whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize 
more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not 
wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. 
I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it 
kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the 
smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and 
hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which 
is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible 
Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a 
true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre 
of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, 
and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, everybody in society 
reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Char¬ 
acter, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


249 


the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must 
make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, 
a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces and numbers and 
time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seems to 
follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, 
and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, 
and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he 
is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An insti¬ 
tution is the lengthened shadow of one man ; as Monachism, of 
the Hermit Antony ; the Reformation, of Luther ; Quakerism, 
of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, 
Milton called “ the height of Rome ” ; and all history resolves 
itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest 
persons. 

Let a man then know his w T orth, and keep things under his 
feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with 
the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world 
which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no 
worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a 
tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on 
these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien 
and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seems to say 
like that, ‘ Who are you, sir 1 ’ Yet they all are his suitors for 
his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out 
and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict : it is 
not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. 
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk 
in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed 
and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with 
all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had 
been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes 
so well the state of man, who is in the w T orld a sort of sot, but 
now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself 
a true prince. 

J)ur reading is mendicant and .sycophantic. In history, our 
imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and 
estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward 
in a small house and common day’s work ; but the things of 
life are the same to both; the sum total of both are the same. 
Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gusta- 
yus 1 Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue ? 
As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed 
their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act 
11 * 


250 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the 
actions of kings to those of gentlemen. 

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so 
magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this 
colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to 
man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere 
suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk 
among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men 
and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money 
but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the 
hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their conscious¬ 
ness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. 

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained 
when w T e inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee ! 
What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may 
be grounded! What is the nature and power of that science- 
baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, 
which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure 
actions, if the least mark of independence appear! The in¬ 
quiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of 
virtue, and of life, vfflich we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We 
denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teach¬ 
ings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind 
which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. 
For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not 
how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from 
light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds 
obviously from the same source whence their life and being al¬ 
so proceed. We first share the life by 'which things exist, and 
afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that 
we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and 
of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth 
man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and 
atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which 
makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When 
we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of 
ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence 
this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all phi¬ 
losophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can 
affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of 
his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to 
his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may 
err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


251 


are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful ac¬ 
tions and acquisitions are but roving ; — the idlest revery, the 
faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. 
Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of per¬ 
ceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they 
do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy 
that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not 
whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it 
after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it 
may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my per¬ 
ception of it is as much a fact as the sun. 

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, 
that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that 
when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but 
all things ; should fill the world with his voice ; should scatter 
forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present 
thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever 
a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things 
pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives 
now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All 
things are made sacred by relation to it,—one as much as 
another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their 
cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular mira¬ 
cles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak 
of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some 
old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, be¬ 
lieve him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its 
fulness and completion 1 Is the parent better than the child 
into whom he has cast his ripened being ? Whence, then, this 
worship of the past ? The centuries are conspirators against 
the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are 
but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is 
light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history 
is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than 
a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. 

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he 
dares not say ‘ I think,’ ‘ I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. 
He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. 
These roses under my window make no reference to former 
roses or to better ones; they are for what they are ; they 
exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is 
simply the rose ; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. 
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full- 


252 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no 
less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all mo¬ 
ments alike. But man postpones or remembers ; he does not 
live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, 
or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe 
to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until 
he too lives with nature in the present, above time. 

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intel¬ 
lects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the 
phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. 
We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a 
few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sen¬ 
tences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of 
the men of talents and character they chance to see, — pain¬ 
fully recollecting the exact words they spoke ; afterwards, 
when they come into the point of view which those had who 
uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing 
to let the w T ords go; for, at any time, they can use words as 
good when occasion comes. If we live truly, -we shall see 
truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is 
for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, w r e 
shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as 
old rubbish. When a man lives wfith God, his voice shall 
be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the 
corn. 

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains 
unsaid; probably cannot be said ; for all that w T e say is the 
far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what 
I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is 
near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any 
known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot¬ 
prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you 
shall not hear any name ; the way, the thought, the good, 
shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude ex¬ 
ample and experience. You take the way from man, not to 
man. All persons that ever existed arc its forgotten minis¬ 
ters. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is some¬ 
what low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is noth¬ 
ing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul 
raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, 
perceives the self-existence of Truth and Bight, and calms 
itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of 
nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, —long intervals of 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


253 


time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I 
think and feel underlay every former state of life and circum¬ 
stances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, 
and what is called death. 

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the 
instant of repose \ it resides in the moment of transition from 
a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the dart¬ 
ing to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul 
becomes ; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to 
poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the 
rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do 
we prate of self-reliance I Inasmuch as the soul is present, 
there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of re¬ 
liance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of 
that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more 
obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his 
finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spir¬ 
its. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. 
We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a 
company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the 
law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, 
kings, rich men, poets, w T ho are not. 

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, 
as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever blessed 
One. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, 
and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which 
it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so 
much vfrtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunt¬ 
ing, whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, 
and engage my respect as examples of its presence and im¬ 
pure action. I see the same law .working in nature for 
conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential 
measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her 
kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and matura¬ 
tion of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering 
itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every ani¬ 
mal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and 
therefore self-relying soul. 

Thus all concentrates : let us not rove; let us sit at home 
with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble 
of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of 
the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their 
feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, 


254 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of 
nature and fortune beside our native riches. 

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, 
nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in 
communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to 
beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go 
alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, bet¬ 
ter than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste 
the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctu¬ 
ary ! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults 
of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit 
around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood 1 All 
men have my blood, and I have all men’s. Not for that will 
I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being 
ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, 
but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole 
world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with em¬ 
phatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, char¬ 
ity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, * Come out 
unto us.’ But keep thy state ; come not into their confusion. 
The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak 
curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. 
“ What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave our¬ 
selves of the love.” 

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and 
faith, let us at least resist our temptations ; let us enter into 
the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and 
constancy in our Saxon breasts. This is to be donb in our 
smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospi¬ 
tality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation 
of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. 
Say to them, 0 father, 0 mother, 0 wife, 0 brother, 0 friend, 
I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Hencefor¬ 
ward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that hencefor¬ 
ward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no 
covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my 
parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of 
one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and un¬ 
precedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be 
myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. 
If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If 
you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will 
not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


255 


deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon 
whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are 
noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and 
myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in 
the same truth with me, cleave to your companions ; I will 
seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. 
It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however 
long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound 
harsh to-day 1 You will soon love what is dictated by your 
nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will 
bring us out safe at last. But so you may give these friends 
pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save 
their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of 
reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; 
then will they justify me, and do the same thing. 

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards 
is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and 
the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his 
crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two 
confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. 
You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in 
the direct , or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have 
satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, 
town, cat, and dog ; whether any of these can upbraid you. 
But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to 
myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It 
denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. 
But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with 
the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, 
let him keep its commandment one day. 

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has 
cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured 
to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful 
his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doc¬ 
trine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be 
to him as strong as iron necessity is to others! 

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called 
by distinction society , he will see the need of these ethics. 
The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are 
become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of 
truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each 
other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want 
men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, 


256 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy 
their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to 
their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night con¬ 
tinually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occu¬ 
pations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but 
society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun 
the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. 

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they 
lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is 
ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, 
and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in 
the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his 
friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, 
and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from 
New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the profes¬ 
sions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, 
edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so 
forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his 
feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast 
with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘ studying a profes¬ 
sion,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has 
not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the 
resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, 
but can and must detach themselves; that w r ith the exercise 
of self-trust, new powers shall appear ; that a man is the word 
made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should 
be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts 
from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and cus¬ 
toms out of the window, w T e pity him no more, but thank and 
tevere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to 
splendor, and make his name dear to all history. 

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a 
revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their re¬ 
ligion ; in their education ; in their pursuits; their modes of 
living ; their association ; in their property ; in their specula¬ 
tive views. 

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves ! That which 
they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. 
Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come 
through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes 
of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. 
Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — anything less 
than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


257 


the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the so¬ 
liloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of 
God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to 
effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dual¬ 
ism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as 
the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then 
see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling 
in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with 
the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout 
nature though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher’s Bon- 
duca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god 
Audate, replies, — 

“ His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 

Our valors are our best gods.” 

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent 
is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret 
calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, at¬ 
tend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. 
Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep 
foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of impart¬ 
ing to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting 
them once more in communication with their own reason. 
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore 
to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors 
are flung wide : him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all 
eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and em¬ 
braces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and 
apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his 
way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him 
because men hated him. “ To the persevering mortal,” said 
Zoroaster, “ the blessed Immortals are swift.” 

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds 
a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israel¬ 
ites, ‘ Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, 
speak any man with us, and we will obey.’ Everywhere I am 
hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut 
his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother’s, 
or his brother’s brother’s God. Every new mind is a new 
•classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and 
power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, 
it imposes its classification on other men, and lo ! a new sys¬ 
tem. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to 
the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach 

Q 


258 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


I 


of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent 
in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some 
powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and 
man’s relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, 
Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subor¬ 
dinating everything to the new terminology, as a girl who has 
just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons 
thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find 
his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master’s 
mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idol¬ 
ized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible 
means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in 
the remote horizon with the walls of the universe ; the lumi¬ 
naries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their mas¬ 
ter built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right 
to see, — how you can see ; ‘ It must be somehow that you 
stole the light from us.’ They do not yet perceive, that light, 
unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into 
theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they 
are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will 
be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, 
and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, 
million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first 
morning. 

2, It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of 
Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its 
fascination for all educated Americans. They who made Eng¬ 
land, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by 
sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In 
manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no 
traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessi¬ 
ties, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or 
into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sen¬ 
sible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the 
missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men 
like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet. 

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the 
globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so 
that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with 
the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He 
who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does 
not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in 
youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


259 


mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries 
ruins to ruins. 

Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover 
to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at 
Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose 
my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark 
on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me 
is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled 
from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be in¬ 
toxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxi¬ 
cated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. 

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper un¬ 
soundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intel¬ 
lect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restless¬ 
ness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at 
home. We imitate ; and what is imitation but the travelling 
of the mind 1 Our houses are built with foreign taste; our 
shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments ; our opinions, 
our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the 
Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flour¬ 
ished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his 
model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing 
to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need 
we copy the Doric or the Gothic model 1 Beauty, convenience, 
grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us 
as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope 
and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the 
climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the peo¬ 
ple, the habit and form of the government, he will create a 
house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste 
and sentiment will be satisfied also. ——— 

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can 
present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole 
life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you \ 
have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which 
each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man I 
yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. I 
Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare 1 1 

Where is the master who. could have instructed Franklin, or 
Washington, or Bacon, or Newton 1 Every great man is a 
unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he 
could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the 
study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and 



260 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this 
moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the 
colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the 
pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not 
possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand- 
cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what 
these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same 
pitch of voice ; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of 
one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, 
obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. 

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so 
does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the 
improvement of society, and no man improves. 

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it 
gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is bar¬ 
barous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scien¬ 
tific ; but this change is not amelioration. For everything 
that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, 
and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well- 
clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a 
pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked 
New-Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and 
an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But com¬ 
pare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the 
white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell 
us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two 
the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft 
pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. 

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of 
his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much 
support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails 
of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical 
almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he 
wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the 
sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows 
as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without 
a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory ; his 
libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the 
number of accidents ; and it may be a question whether ma¬ 
chinery does not encumber: whether we have not lost by 
refinement some energy, by a Christianity intrenched in estab¬ 
lishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every 
Stoic was a Stoic ; but in Christendom where is the Christian? 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


261 


There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the 
standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever 
were. A singular equality may be observed between the great 
men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, 
religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to ed¬ 
ucate greater men than Plutarch’s heroes, three or four and 
twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Pho- 
cion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they 
leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called 
by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the 
founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are 
only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the 
improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and 
Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to 
astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the 
resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, dis¬ 
covered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any 
one since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked 
boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing 
of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud 
laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius 
returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of 
the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Na¬ 
poleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of 
falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all aids. 
The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says 
Las Casas, “ without abolishing our arms, magazines, commis¬ 
saries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Homan custom, 
the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his 
hand-mill, and bake his bread himself.” 

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water 
of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not 
rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenome¬ 
nal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year 
die, and their experience with them. 

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on 
governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. 
Men have looked aw r ay from themselves and at things so long, 
that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and 
civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate as¬ 
saults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on prop¬ 
erty. They measure their esteem of each other by what each 
has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes 


262 


SELF-RELIANCE. 


ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. 
Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, 
— came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime ; then he feels 
that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root 
in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no rob¬ 
ber takes it away. But that which a man is does always by 
necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living prop¬ 
erty, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revo¬ 
lutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually re¬ 
news itself wherever the man breathes. “ Thy lot or portion 
of life,” said the Caliph Ali, “ is seeking after thee; therefore 
be at rest from seeking after it.” Our dependence on these 
foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The 
political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater 
the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement. 
The delegation from Essex ! The Democrats from New Hamp¬ 
shire ! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself 
stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. 
In like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote 
and resolve in multitude. Not so, 0 friends, will the God deign 
to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the re¬ 
verse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and 
stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He 
is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man bet¬ 
ter than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless 
mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the 
upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that 
power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for 
good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws him¬ 
self unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, 
stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works mira¬ 
cles ; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a 
man who stands on his head. 

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with 
her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do 
thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause 
and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and ac¬ 
quire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt 
sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political vic¬ 
tory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return 
of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises 
your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. 
Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. 
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 


OM PENSAT 10 

—♦— 


The wings of Time are black and white, 
Pied with morning and with night. 
Mountain tall and ocean deep 
Trembling balance duly keep. 

In changing moon, in tidal wave, 

Glows the feud of Want and Have. 
Gauge of more and less through space 
Electric star and pencil plays. 

The lonely Earth amid the "balls 
That hurry through the eternal halls, 

A makeweight,flying to the void, 
Supplemental asteroid. 

Or compensatory spark, 

Shoots across the neutral Dark. 



Man ’s the elm, and Wealth the vine; 
Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: 
Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, 
None from its stock that vine can reave. 
Fear not, then, thou child infirm, 

There’s no god dare wrong a worm. 
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, 

And power to him who power exerts; 
Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
Lo! it rushes thee to meet; 

And all that Nature made thy own, 
Floating in air or pent in stone, 

Will rive the hills and swim the sea, 
And, like thy shadow, follow thee. 



COMPENSATION. 



VER since I was a boy, I have wished to write a dis- 


course on Compensation : for it seemed to me when very 
young, that on this subject life was ahead of theology, and 
the people knew more than the preachers taught. The docu¬ 
ments, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed 
my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always before me, 
even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread 
in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and the 
dwelling-house, greetings, relations, debts and credits, the in¬ 
fluence of character, the nature and endowment of all men. 

It seemed to me, also, that in it might be shown men a ray 
of divinity, the present action of the soul of this world, clean 
from all vestige of tradition, and so the heart of man might 
be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, conversing with 
that which he knows was always and always must be, because 
it really is now. It appeared, moreover, that if this doctrine 
could be stated in terms with an}' - resemblance to those bright 
intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it 
would be a star in many dark hours and crooked passages in 
our journey that would not suffer us to lose our way. 

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon 
at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, 
unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last 
Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not executed in this 
world ; that the wicked are successful; that the good are mis- , 
arable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a com¬ 
pensation to be made to both parties in the next life. No 
offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doc¬ 
trine. As far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up 
they separated without remark on the sermon. 

Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the 
preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the 

vol. i. is — 



266 


COMPENSATION. 


present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, 
horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the 
saints are poor and despised ; and that a compensation is to 
be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like grati¬ 
fications another day, — bank-stock and doubloons, venison 
and champagne 1 This must be the compensation intended ; 
for what else ? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and 
praise ? to love and serve men ? Why, that they can do now. 
The legitimate inference the disciple would draw was : ‘We 
are to have such a good time as the sinners have now ’; or, to 
push it to its extreme import: ‘You sin now ; we shall sin by 
and by ; we would sin now, if we could ; not being successful, 
we expect our revenge to-morrow.’ 

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are 
successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the 
preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the 
market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of con¬ 
fronting and convicting the world from the truth ; announ¬ 
cing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will : and 
so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and 
falsehood. 

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of 
the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men 
when occasionally they treat the related topics. I think that 
our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in prin¬ 
ciple, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are 
better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. 
Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind 
him in his own experience ; and all men feel sometimes the 
falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser 
than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits 
without afterthought, if said in conversation, would probably 
be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed 
company on Providence and the divine laws, he is answered 
by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the 
dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his 
own statement. 

I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record 
some facts that indicate the path of the law of Compensation ; 
happy beyond my expectation, if I shall truly draw the small¬ 
est arc of this circle. 

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of 


COMPENSATION. 


267 


nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold ; in the ebb 
and flow of waters; in male and female ; in the inspiration 
and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quan¬ 
tity and quality in the fluids of the animal body ; in the systole 
and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of 
sound ; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity ; in electri¬ 
city, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magne¬ 
tism at one end of a needle; the opposite magnetism takes 
place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north re¬ 
pels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable 
dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and sug¬ 
gests another thing to make it whole ; as, spirit, matter ; man, 
woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, 
under; motion, rest; yea, nay. 

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. 
The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. 
There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, 
day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, 
in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. 
The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these 
small boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom the 
physiologist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but 
a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. 
A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from 
another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are 
enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. 

The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. 
What we gain in power is lost in time; and the converse. 
The periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another 
instance. The influences of climate and soil in political history 
are another. The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil 
does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 

The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. 
Every excess causes a defect; every defect, an excess. Every 
sweet hath its sour; every evil, its good. Every faculty which 
is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. 
It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain 
of wit there is a grain of folly. For everything you have 
missed, you have gained something else; and for everything 
you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are in¬ 
creased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, 
nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; 
swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopo- 


268 


COMPENSATION. 


lies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily 
seek a level from their loftiest tossing, than the varieties of 
condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some 
levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the 
strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground 
with all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and 
by temper and position a bad citizen, — a morose ruffian, with 
a dash of the pirate in him ;—nature sends him a troop of 
pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the dame’s 
classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths 
his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate 
the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb 
in, and keeps her balance true. 

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But 
the President has paid dear for his White House. It has com¬ 
monly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attri¬ 
butes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appear¬ 
ance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real 
masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire 
the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius 1 
Neither has this an immunity. He wdio by force of will or of 
thought is great, and overlooks thousands, has the charges of 
that eminence. With every influx of light comes new T danger. 
Has he light 1 he must bear witness to the light, and always 
outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, 
by his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He 
must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that 
that world loves and admires and covets 1 — he must cast behind 
him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his 
truth, and become a byword and a hissing. 

This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain 
to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be 
mismanaged long. Res nolunt din male administrari. Though 
no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will ap¬ 
pear. If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not 
safe. If you tax too high, the revenue wdll yield nothing. If 
you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries wdll not convict. 
If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. If the 
government is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by 
an overcharge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a 
fiercer flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to 
elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and to estab¬ 
lish themselves with great indifferency under all varieties of 


COMPENSATION. 


269 


circumstances. Under all governments the influence of charac¬ 
ter remains the same, — in Turkey and in New England about 
alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly 
confesses that man must have been as free as culture could 
make him. 

These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is rep¬ 
resented in every one of its particles. Everything in nature 
contains all the powers of nature. Everything is made of one 
hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every met¬ 
amorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a 
swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. 
Each new form repeats not only the main character of the 
type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, 
hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every 
occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world 
and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire em¬ 
blem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, 
its course and its end. And each one must somehow accom¬ 
modate the whole man, and recite all his destiny. 

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope 
cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being lit¬ 
tle. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and 
organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity, — all find 
room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our 
life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that 
God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. 
The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every 
point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so 
the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. 

Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That 
soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. 
We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its 
fatal strength. “ It is in the world, and the world was made 
by it.” Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its 
balance in all parts of life. O l kv&oi A 16s aet evnlnrova-i, — The 
dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multi¬ 
plication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how 
you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact 
value, nor more, nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is 
told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every 
wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retri¬ 
bution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears 
wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be 


270 


COMPENSATION. 


fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk 
to which it belongs is there behind. 

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, 
in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, or in real nature; 
and secondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. 
Men call the circumstance the retribution. The casual retri¬ 
bution is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retribu¬ 
tion in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is 
inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long 
time, and so does not become distinct until after many years. 
The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they 
follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow 
out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens 
within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause 
and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; 
for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in 
the means, the fruit in the seed. 

Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be dis¬ 
parted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate ; for 
example, — to gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the 
senses from the needs of the character. The ingenuity of man 
has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem,—how 
to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual 
bright, &c., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral 
fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper 
surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end , 
■without an other end. The soul says, Eat; the body would 
feast. The soul says, The man and woman shall be one flesh 
and one soul; the body would join the flesh only. The soul 
says, Have dominion over all things to the end of virtue ; the 
body would have the power over things to its own ends. 

The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. 
It would be the only fact. All things shall be added unto it, 
— power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The particular man 
aims to be somebody ; to set up for himself; to truck and 
higgle for a private good; and, in particulars, to ride, that he 
may ride; to dress, that he may be dressed; to eat, that he 
may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to 
be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. 
They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature, 
the sweet, without the other side, — the bitter. 

This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up 
to this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the small- 


COMPENSATION. 


271 


est success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. 
Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable 
things, power out of strong things, as soon as we seek to 
separate them from the whole. We can no more halve things 
and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside 
that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. 
“ Drive out nature with a fork, she comes running back.” 

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the 
unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he 
does not know ; that they do not touch him; — but the brag 
is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes 
them in one part, they attack him in another more vital part. 
If he has escaped them in form, and in the appearance, it is be¬ 
cause he has resisted his life, and fled from himself, and the 
retribution is so much death. So signal is the failure of all 
attempts to make this separation of the good from the tax, 
that the experiment would not be tried, — since to try it is to 
be mad, -— but for the circumstance, that when the disease 
began in the will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is 
at once infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in 
each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an 
object, and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid’s 
head, but not the dragon’s tail; and thinks he can cut off that 
which he would have, from that which he would not have. 
“ How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest Heavens in 
silence, 0 thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied 
Providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have un¬ 
bridled desires ! ” * 

The human soul is true to these facts in the painting 
of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It 
finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks call 
Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally ascribed to 
him many base actions, they involuntarily made amends to 
reason, by tying up the hands of so bad a god. He is made 
as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus knows one 
secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another. He 
cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps the key of 
them. 

“Of all the gods, I only know the keys 
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
His thunders sleep.” 

A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its 
* St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I. 


272 


COMPENSATION. 


moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics ; 
and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented and 
get any currency which was not moral. Aurora forgot to ask 
youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is 
old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable ; the sacred waters did 
not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried, in the 
Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back 
whilst he was bathing in the dragon’s blood, and that spot 
which it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is a 
crack in everything God has made. It would seem, there is 
always this vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares, 
even into the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted 
to make bold holiday, and to shake itself free of the old laws, 
— this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that the 
law is fatal ; that in nature nothing can be given, all things 
are sold. 

This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch 
in the universe, and lets no offence go unchastised. The 
Furies, they said, are attendants on justice, and if the sun in 
Heaven should transgress his path, they would punish him. 
The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leath¬ 
ern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their 
owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the 
Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, 
and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose 
point Ajax fell. They recorded, that when the Thasians 
erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one of 
his rivals went to it by night, and endeavored to throw it 
down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its 
pedestal, and was crushed to death beneath its fall. 

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came 
from thought above the will of the writer. That is the best 
part of each writer, which has nothing private in it; that 
which he does not know ; that which flowed out of his con¬ 
stitution, and not from his too active invention ; that which 
in the study of a single artist you might not easily find, but 
in the study of many, you would abstract as the spirit of 
them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early 
Hellenic world, that I would know. The name and circum¬ 
stance of Phidias, however convenient for history, embarrass 
when we come to the highest criticism. We are to see that 
which man was tending to do in a given period, and was 
hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering 


'% 


COMPENSATION. 273 

volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ where¬ 
by man at the moment wrought. 

Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the 
proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature of 
reason, or the statements of an absolute truth, without quali¬ 
fication. Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are 
the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning 
-world, chained to appearances, wdll not allow the realist to say 
in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without 
contradiction. And this law of laws which the pulpit, the 
senate, and the college deny, is hourly preached in all mar¬ 
kets and workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is 
as true and as omnipresent as that of birds and flies. 

All things are double, one against another. — Tit for tat; 
an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a tooth ; blood for blood ; meas¬ 
ure for measure; love for love. — Give and it shall be given 
you. — He that watereth shall be watered himself. — What 
will you have ? quoth God ; pay for it and take it. — Nothing 
venture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly for what 
thou hast done, no more, no less. — Who doth not work shall 
not eat. — Harm watch, harm catch. -— Curses always recoil 
on the head of him who imprecates them. — If you put a 
chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself 
around your own. — Bad counsel confounds the adviser. — 
The Devil is an ass. 

It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is 
overmastered and characterized above our wdll by the law of 
nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public 
good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in 
a line with the poles of the world. 

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will, 
or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his com¬ 
panions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who 
utters it. " It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but the other 
end remains in the thrower’s bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon 
hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in 
the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, 
it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the 
boat. 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. “ No man 
had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him,” said 
Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he 
excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appro- 
12* R 


274 


COMPENSATION. 


priate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he 
shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out 
others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suf¬ 
fer as well as they. Tf you leave out their heart, you shall 
lose your own. The senses would make things of all persons ; 
of women, of children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, “ I 
will get it from his purse or get it from his skin,” is sound 
philosophy. 

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are 
speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I 
stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no dis¬ 
pleasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or 
as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and inter¬ 
penetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure 
from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that 
is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong ; he shrinks 
from me as far as I have shrunk from him ; his eyes no longer 
seek mine ; there is war between us ; there is hate in him and 
fear in me. 

All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all 
unjust accumulations of property and power, are avenged in 
the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, 
and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, that 
there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, 
and though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death 
somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our 
cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and 
mowed and gibbered over government and property. That 
obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great 
wrongs which must be revised. 

Of the like nature is that expectation of change which in¬ 
stantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. The 
terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, the awe 
of prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to 
impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious vir¬ 
tue, are the tremblings of the balance of justice through the 
heart and mind of man. 

Experienced men of the world know very well that it is 
best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a man 
often pays dear for a small frugality. The borrower runs in 
his own debt. Has a man gained anything who has received 
a hundred favors and rendered none 1 Has he gained by bor¬ 
rowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor’s wares, 


COMPENSATION. 


275 


or horses, or money 1 There arises on the deed the instant 
acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on 
the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The trans¬ 
action remains in the memory of himself and his neighbor; 
and every new transaction alters, according to its nature, their 
relation to each other. He may soon come to see that he had 
better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his 
neighbor’s coach, and that “ the highest price he can pay for 
a thing is to ask for it.” 

A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and 
know that it is the part of prudence to face every claimant, 
and pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your 
heart. Always pay; for, first or last, you must pay your en¬ 
tire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between 
you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay 
at last your own debt. If you are wise, you will dread a pros¬ 
perity which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end 
of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is 
levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base 
— and that is the one base thing in the universe — to receive 
favors and render none. In the order of nature we cannot 
render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only sel¬ 
dom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line 
for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of 
too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt 
and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 

Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, 
say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a 
broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of good 
sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your land a 
skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to gardening; in 
your sailor, good sense applied to navigation; in the house, 
good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, 
good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you multi¬ 
ply your presence, or spread youfself throughout your estate. 
But because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in 
life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. 
The swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor is 
knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. 
These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, 
but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, 
cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot 
be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedi- 


276 


COMPENSATION. 


ence to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, 
cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature 
which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. The 
law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power; 
but they who do not the thing have not the power. 

Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of 
a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense 
illustration of the perfect compensation of the universe. The 
absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every¬ 
thing has its price, — and if that price is not paid, not that 
thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible 
to get anything without its price, -— is not less sublime in tho 
columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in the laws 
of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. 
I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees impli¬ 
cated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern 
ethics wdiich sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured 
out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in tho 
footing of the shop bill as in the history of a state, — do rec¬ 
ommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his 
business to his imagination. 

The league between virtue and nature engages all things to 
assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and sub¬ 
stances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds 
that things arc arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no 
den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and 
the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as 
if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in tho 
woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and 
mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe 
out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to 
leave no inlet or clew. Some damning circumstance always 
transpires. The laws and substances of nature—water, snow, 
wind, gravitation — become penalties to the thief. 

On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for 
all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is 
mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic 
equation. The good man has absolute good, which like 
fire turns everything to its own nature, so that you cannot 
do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against Na¬ 
poleon, when he approached, cast dowm their colors and from 
enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, 
©fience, poverty, prove benefactors : — 


COMPENSATION. 


277 


“ Winds blow and waters roll 
Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 

Yet in themselves are nothing.” 

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As 
no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to 
him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere 
made useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his horns 
and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved 
him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed 
him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. 
As no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has con¬ 
tended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with 
the hindrances or talents of men, until he has suffered from 
the one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own want 
of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to 
live in society 1 Thereby he is driven to entertain himself 
alone, and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the 
wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl. 

Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation 
which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we 
are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A great man is 
always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of 
advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, 
defeated, he has a chance to learn something ; he has been put 
on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his 
ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moder¬ 
ation and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side 
of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to 
find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from 
him like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo ! he 
has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise. I 
hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is 
said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. 
But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I 
feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. In gen¬ 
eral, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. 
As the Sandwich-Islander believes that the strength and valor 
of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength 
of the temptation we resist. 

The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and 
enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts 
and bars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness 
in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long, 


278 


COMPENSATION. 


■under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But 
it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but 
himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. 
There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature 
and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfil¬ 
ment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to 
loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. 
Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The 
longer the payment is withholden, the better for you ; for com¬ 
pound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of 
this exchequer. 

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat 
nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It 
makes no difference whether tho actors be many or one, a 
tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily 
bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The 
mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. 
Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like 
its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle ; it would 
whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire 
and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have 
these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire- 
engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. 
The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrong-doers. 
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a 
tongue of fame ; every prison a more illustrious abode ; every 
burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed 
or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to 
side. Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to 
communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the 
martyrs are justified. 

Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. 
The man is all. Everything has two sides, a good and an evil. 
Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. But the 
doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. 
The thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, —What 
boots it to do well 1 there is one event to good and evil; if I 
gain any good, I must pay for it; if I lose any good, I gain 
some other; all actions are indifferent. 

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, 
its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. 
The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, 


COMPENSATION. 


279 


whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the abo¬ 
riginal abyss of real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation, 
or a part, but the whole. Being in the vast affirmative, exclud¬ 
ing negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, 
parts, and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the 
influx from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the 
same. Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great 
Night or shade, on which, as a background, the living universe 
paints itself forth; but no fact is begotten by it; it cannot 
work ; for it is not. It cannot work any good; it cannot work 
any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than 
te be. 

We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because 
the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy, and does not 
come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There 
is no stunning confutation of his nonsense before men and 
angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law 1 Inasmuch as 
he carries the malignity and the lie with him, he so far deceases 
from nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration 
of the wrong to the understanding also; but should we not 
see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal ac¬ 
count. 

Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of 
rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty 
to virtue ; no penalty to wisdom ; they are proper additions 
of being. In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous 
act, I add to the world ; I plant into deserts conquered from 
Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the lim¬ 
its of the horizon. There can be no excess to love ; none to 
knowledge ; none to beauty, when these attributes are consid¬ 
ered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always 
affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism. 

His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is 
trust. Our instinct uses “ more ” and “ less ” in application 
to man, of the presence of the soul , and not' of its absence ; 
the brave man is greater than the coward; the true, the be¬ 
nevolent, the wise, is more a man, and not less, than the fool 
and knave. There is no tax on the good of virtue ; for that 
is the incoming of God himself, or absolute existence, without 
any comparative. Material good has its tax, and if it came 
without desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind 
will blow it away. But all the good of nature is the soul’s, 
and may be had, if paid for in nature’s lawful coin, that is, by 


280 


COMPENSATION. 


labor which the heart and the head allow. I no longer wish 
to meet a good I do not earn, for example, to find a pot of 
buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new burdens. I 
do not wish more external goods, — neither possessions, nor 
honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the 
tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge that 
the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up 
treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I con¬ 
tract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom 
of St. Bernard, — “ Nothing can work me damage except my¬ 
self ; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never 
am a real sufferer but by my own fault.” . 

In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the in¬ 
equalities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems 
to be the distinction of More and Less. How can Less not 
feel the pain ; how not feel indignation or malevolence towards 
More 1 Look at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, 
and knows not well what to make of it. He almost shuns 
their eye ; he fears they will upbraid God. What should they 
do ? It seems a great injustice. But see the facts nearly, 
and these mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces 
them, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and 
soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine 
ceases. His is mine. I am my brother, and my brother is 
me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, 
I can yet love; I can still receive ; and he that loveth maketh 
his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery 
that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the friend¬ 
liest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied is my 
own. It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. 
Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love 
I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. 
His virtue, — is not that mine 1 His wit, — if it cannot be 
made mine, it is not wit. 

Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes 
which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are 
advertisements of a nature whose law is growth. Every soul 
is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, 
its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish 
crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer 
admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In pro¬ 
portion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are 
frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant, and 
all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming, 

l 


COMPENSATION. 


281 


as it were, a transparent fluid membrane through which the 
living form is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated 
heterogeneous fabric of many dates, and of no settled charac¬ 
ter, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be en¬ 
largement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man 
of yesterday. And such should be the outward biography of 
man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, 
as he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed 
estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not co-operating with 
the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. 

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels 
go. We do not see that they only go out, that archangels may 
come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in 
the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. 
We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or 
recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of 
the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, 
nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. 
We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. 
But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty 
saith, ‘ Up and onward forevermore ! ’ We cannot stay amid 
the ruins. Neither will we rely on the new ; and so we walk 
ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look back¬ 
wards. 

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent 
to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A 
fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, 
a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpay¬ 
able. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that 
underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, 
lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later as¬ 
sumes the aspect of a guide or genius ; for it commonly oper¬ 
ates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of in¬ 
fancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a 
wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and al¬ 
lows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth 
of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new 
acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove 
of the first importance to the next years; and the man or 
woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with 
no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by 
the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is 
made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide 
neighborhoods of men. 























- 





SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

—*— 


The living Heaven thy prayers respect, 
House at once and architect, 

Quarrying man’s rejected hours, 

Builds therewith eternal towers; 

Sole and self-commanded works, 

Fears not undermining days, 

Grows by decays, 

And, by the famous might that lurks 
In reaction and recoil, 

Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil; 
Forging, through swart arms of Offence, 
The silver seat of Innocence. 








SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


W HEN the act of reflection takes place in the mind, 
when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we 
discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as 
we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. 
Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and 
terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of 
memorj 7 ’. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old 
house, the foolish person, — however neglected in the passing, 
— have a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in 
the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house. The 
soul will not know either deformity or pain. If, in the hours 
of clear reason, we should speak the severest truth, we should 
say, that we had never made a sacrifice. In these hours the 
mind seems so great, that nothing can be taken from us that 
seems much. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe re¬ 
mains to the heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities 
abate our trust. No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as 
he might. Allow for exaggeration in the most patient and 
sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the 
finite that has wrought and suffered ; the infinite lies stretched 
in smiling repose. 

The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if 
man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind 
difficulties which are none of his. No man need be perplexed 
in his speculations. Let him do and say what strictly belongs 
to him, and, though very ignorant of books, his nature shall 
not yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our 
young people are diseased with the theological problems of 
original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These 
never presented a practical difficulty to any man, — never 
darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his 



286 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, 
and whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught them 
cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure. A simple 
mind will not know these enemies. It is quite another thing 
that he should be able to give account of his faith, and ex¬ 
pound to another the theory of his self-union and freedom. 
This requires rare gifts. Yet, without this self-knowledge, 
there may be a sylvan strength and integrity in that which he 
is. “ A few strong instincts and a few plain rules ” suffice us. 

My will never gave the images in my mind the rank they 
now take. The regular course of studies, the years of aca¬ 
demical and professional education, have not yielded me better 
facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin 
School. What we do not call education is more precious than 
that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of re¬ 
ceiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education 
often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this nat¬ 
ural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it. 

In like manner, our moral nature is vitiated by any inter¬ 
ference of our will. People represent virtue as a struggle, 
and take to themselves great airs upon their attainments, and 
the question is everywhere vexed, when a noble nature is com¬ 
mended, whether the man is not better who strives with temp¬ 
tation. But there is no merit in the matter. Either God is 
there, or he is not there. We love characters in proportion as 
they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks 
or knows about his virtues, the better we like him. Timo- 
leon’s victories are the best victories; which ran and flowed 
like Homer’s verses, Plutarch said. When we see a soul whose 
acts arc all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must 
thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sour¬ 
ly on the angel, and say, ‘ Crump is a better man with his 
grunting resistance to all his native devils.’ 

Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over 
will in all practical life. There is less intention in history 
than we ascribe to it. We impute deep-laid, far-sighted plans 
to Csesar and Napoleon; but the best of their power was in 
nature, not in them. Men of an extraordinary success, in 
their honest moments, have always sung, ‘ Not unto us, not 
unto us.’ According to the faith of their times, they have 
built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their 
success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which 
found in them an unobstructed channel \ and the wonders of 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


287 


which they were the visible conductors seemed to the eye their 
deed. Did the wires generate the galvanism 1 It is even true 
that there was less in them on which they could reflect, than 
in another ; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hol¬ 
low. That which externally seemed will and immovableness 
was willingness and self-annihilation. Could Shakespeare give 
a theory of Shakespeare 1 Could ever a man of prodigious 
mathematical genius convey to others any insight into his 
methods 1 If he could communicate that secret, it would in¬ 
stantly lose its exaggerated value, blending with the daylight 
and the vital energy the power to stand and to go. 

The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations, that our 
life might be much easier and simpler than we make it; 
that the world might be a happier place than it is; that there 
is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wring¬ 
ing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth ; that we mis- 
create our own evils. We interfere with the optimism of nature; 
for, whenever we get this vantage-ground of the past, or of a 
wdser mind in the present, we are able to discern that we are 
begirt with laws which execute themselves. 

The face of eternal nature teaches the same lesson. Nature 
will not have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevo¬ 
lence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and 
wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the 
Abolition convention, or the Temperance meeting, or the Tran¬ 
scendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, ‘ So 
hot 1 my little sir.’ 

We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs inter¬ 
meddle, and have things in our own way, until the sacrifices 
and virtues of society are odious. Love should make joy; but 
our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday schools and churches 
and pauper societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves 
to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the 
same ends at w r hich these aim, but do not arrive. Why should 
all virtue work in one and the same way 1 Why should all 
give dollars 1 It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and 
we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dol¬ 
lars ; merchants have ; let them give them. Farmers wall give 
corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; 
the children will bring flow T ers. And why drag this dead weight 
of a Sunday school over the whole Christendom 1 It is natural 
and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity 
should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when 


288 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against 
their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions 
for an hour against their will. 

If we look wider, things are all alike; laws, and letters, and 
creeds, and modes of living, seem a travesty of truth. Our 
society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which re¬ 
sembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built over 
hill and dale, and which are superseded by the discovery of the 
law that water rises to the level of its source. It is a Chinese 
wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing 
army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly 
appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are 
found to answer just as well. 

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by 
short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit 
is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere 
falling. The walking of man and all animals is a falling for¬ 
ward. All our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, 
splitting, digging, rowing, and so forth, are done by dint of 
continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, 
fall for ever and ever. 

The simplicity of the universe is very different from the 
simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral nature out and 
out, and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired and char¬ 
acter formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of nature is not that 
which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last anal¬ 
ysis can nowise be made. We judge of a man’s wisdom by 
his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness 
of nature is an immortal youth. The wild fertility of nature 
is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our 
fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and schools, 
for erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. 
One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Everyman sees 
that he is that middle point, whereof everything may be af¬ 
firmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, 
he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels 
what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-pedler. There is 
no permanent wise man, except in the figment of the Stoics. 
We side -with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward 
and the robber ; but we have been ourselves that coward and 
robber, and shall be # again, not in the low circumstance, but in 
comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul. 

A little consideration of what takes place around us every 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


289 


day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will 
regulates events ; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and 
fruitless ; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are 
we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we be¬ 
come divine. Belief and love, — a believing love will relieve 
us of a vast load of care. 0 my brothers, God exists. There 
is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every 
man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so in¬ 
fused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when 
•we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its crea¬ 
tures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own 
breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We 
need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly 
listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose 
so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and 
modes of action, and of entertainment ] Certainly there is a 
possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and 
wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and 
congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream 
of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and 
you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect 
contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then 
you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. 
If we will not be marplots with our miserable interferences, 
the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men 
would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from 
the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom 
of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the 
air, and the sun. 

I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech by which 
I would distinguish what is commonly called choice among 
men, and which is a partial act, the choice of the hands, of the 
eyes, of the appetites, and not a whole act of the man. But 
that which I call right or goodness is the choice of my consti¬ 
tution ; and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire af¬ 
ter, is the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution; 
and the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the work 
for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable to reason 
for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an ex¬ 
cuse any longer for his deeds, that they are the custom of his 
trade. What business has he with an evil trade 1 Has he not 
a calling in his character. 

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the calL 
13 s 


VOL. i. 


290 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He 
has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. 
He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on 
every side but one ; on that side all obstruction is taken 
away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into 
an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his or¬ 
ganization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates 
itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to 
him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can 
do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his 
own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from 
the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned 
to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by 
the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the pow¬ 
er to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. 
The pretence that* he has another call, a summons by name 
and personal election and outward “ signs that mark him ex¬ 
traordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” is fanati¬ 
cism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one 
mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons there¬ 
in. 

By doing his work, he makes the need felt which he can 
supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By do¬ 
ing his own work, he unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public 
speaking that it has not abandonment. Somewhere, not only 
every orator but every man should let out all the length of all 
the reins ; should find or make a frank and hearty expression 
of what force and meaning is in him. The common experience 
is, that the man fits himself as w T ell as he can to the customa¬ 
ry details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as 
a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he 
moves ; the man is lost. Until he can manage to communi¬ 
cate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he 
does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that an out¬ 
let for his character, so that he may justify his work to their 
eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and char¬ 
acter make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, what; 
ever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him commu¬ 
nicate, or men will never know and honor him aright. Fool- 
ish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that 
thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spira¬ 
cle of your character and aims. 

We like only such actions as have already long had the 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


291 


praise of men, and do not perceive that anything man can do 
may he divinely done. We think greatness entailed or organ¬ 
ized in some places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, 
and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture from a cat¬ 
gut, and Eulenstein from a jevvs-harp, 'and a nimble-fingered 
lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and Landseer out of 
swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company 
in which he w T as hidden. What w T e call obscure condition or 
vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not 
yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable 
and renowned as any. In our estimates, let us take a lesson 
from kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection of fami¬ 
lies, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, 
royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To 
make habitually a new estimate, — that is elevation. 

What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with 
hope or fear h In himself is his might. Let him regard no 
good as solid, but that wdiich is in his nature, and which must 
grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune 
may come and go like summer leaves ; let him scatter them 
on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite produc¬ 
tiveness. 

He may have his owm. A man’s genius, the quality that dif¬ 
ferences him from every other, the susceptibility to one class 
of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection 
of w'hat is unfit, determines for him the character of the uni¬ 
verse. A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a se¬ 
lecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes. 
He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and 
circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are 
set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like 
the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, 
persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to 
say why, remain, because they have a relation to him not less 
real for being as 3 'et unapprehended. They are symbols of 
value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness 
which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional im¬ 
ages of books and other minds. What attracts my attention 
shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, 
whilst a thousand persons,'as worthy, go by it, to whom I 
give no regard. It is enough that these particulars speak to 
me. A few' anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, 
face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out 


292 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


of all proportion to tlieir apparent significance, if you measure 
them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. 
Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast 
about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. 
What your heart thinks great is great. The soul’s emphasis 
is always right. 

Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius, 
the man has the highest right. Everywhere he may take 
what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor can he take anything 
else, though all doors were open, nor can all the force of men 
hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to attempt to 
keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will 
tell itself. That mood into which a friend can bring us is his 
dominion over us. To the thoughts of that state of mind he 
has a right. All the secrets of that state of mind he can 
compel. This is a law which statesmen use in practice. All 
the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in 
awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon 
sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with 
the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that 
it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe 
men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort 
of free-masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, 
penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet. 

Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. 
Yet a man may come to find that the strongest of defences 
and of ties, — that he has been understood; and he who has 
received an opinion may come to find it the most inconvenient 
of bonds. 

If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, 
his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into 
any which he publishes. If you pour water into a vessel 
twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to say, I will pour it 
only into this or that; it will find its level in all. Men feel 
and act the consequences of your doctrine, without being able 
to show how they follow. Show us an arc of the curve, and 
a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. We are 
always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the 
perfect intelligence that subsists between wise men of remote 
ages. A man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book, 
but time and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a 
secret doctrine, had he '] What secret can he conceal from 
the eyes of Bacon] of Montaigne] of Kant] Therefore, 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 293 

Aristotle said of his works, “ They are published and not 
published.” 

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, 
however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell 
his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never 
the wiser, — the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for 
an estate. God screens us evermore from premature ideas. 
Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us 
in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened ; 
then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is 
like a dream. 

Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he 
sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gild¬ 
ing, exalting soul for all its pride. “ Earth fills her lap with 
splendors” not her own . The vale of Tempe, Tivoli, and 
Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as good 
earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffccting! 

People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon 
and the trees ; as it is not observed that the keepers of Ro¬ 
man galleries, or the valets of painters, have any elevation of 
thought, or that librarians are wiser men than others. There 
are graces in the demeanor of a polished and noble person, 
which are lost upon the eye of a churl. These are like the 
stars whose light has not yet reached us. 

He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel 
of our waking knowledge. The visions of the night bear some 
proportion to the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are 

exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see our evil af¬ 

fections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps the 
traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified to a 
giant, so that every gesture of his hand is terrific. “ My 
children,” said an old man to his boys scared by a figure in 
the dark entry, — “ my children, you will never see anything 
■worse than yourselves.” As in dreams, so in the scarcely less 
fluid events of the world, every man sees himself in colossal, 
without knowing that it is himself. The good, compared to 
the evil which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. 

Every quality of his mind is magnified in some one acquaint¬ 

ance, and every emotion of his heart in some one. He is like 
a quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, west, north, or 
south ; or, an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And why 
not 1 He cleaves to one person, and avoids another, according 
to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking him- 


294 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


self in his associates, and moreover in his trade, and habits, 
and gestures, and meats, and drinks ; and comes at last to be 
faithfully represented by every view you take of his circum¬ 
stances. 

He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire, 
but what we are 1 You have observed a skilful man reading 
Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a thousand 
persons. Take the book into your two hands, and read your 
eyes out; you will never find what I find. If any ingenious 
reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight he 
gets, he is as secure now the book is Englished, as if it were 
imprisoned in the Pelews’ tongue. It is with a good book as 
it is with good company. Introduce a base person among gen¬ 
tlemen ; it is all to no purpose ; he is not their fellow. Every 
society protects itself. The company is perfectly safe, and he 
is not one of them, though his body is in the room. 

What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, which 
adjust the relation of all persons to each other, by the mathe¬ 
matical measure of their havings and beings'? Gertrude is 
enamored of Guy; how high, how aristocratic, how Roman 
his mien and manners ! to live with him were life indeed, and 
no purchase is too great; and heaven and earth are moved to 
that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy; but what now avails how 
high, how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners, if 
his heart and aims are in the senate, in the theatre, and in the 
billiard-room, and she has no aims, no conversation, that can 
enchant her graceful lord ? 

He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but 
nature. The most wonderful talents, the most meritorious 
exertions, really avail very little with us ; but nearness or 
likeness of nature, — how beautiful is the ease of its victory ! 
Persons approach us famous for their beauty, for their accom¬ 
plishments, worthy of all wonder for their charms and gifts ; 
they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the company, 
with very imperfect result. To be sure, it would be ungrate¬ 
ful in us not to praise them loudly. Then, when all is done, 
a person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes 
to us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it 
were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one 
was gone, instead of another having come ; we are utterly re¬ 
lieved and refreshed ; it is a sort of joyful solitude. W 7 e fool¬ 
ishly think in our days of sin, that we must court friends by 
compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its breeding, 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


295 


and its estimates. But only that soul can be my friend which 
I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which 
I do not decline, and which does not decline to me, but, native 
of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experi¬ 
ence. The scholar forgets himself, and apes the customs and 
costumes of the man of the world, to deserve the smile of 
beauty, and follow some giddy girl not yet taught by religious 
passion to know the noble woman with all that is serene, orac¬ 
ular, and beautiful in her soul. Let him be great, and love 
shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the 
neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, 
and the insane levity of choosing associates by others’ eyes. 

He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all ac¬ 
ceptation, that a man may have that allowance lie takes. 
Take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all men 
acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man, 
with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or drivel¬ 
ler, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly accept 
your own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak 
about and deny your own name, or whether you see your work 
produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the 
revolution of the stars. 

The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may 
teach by doing, and not otherwise. If he can communicate 
himself, he can teach, but not by words. He teaches who 
gives, and he learns who receives. There is no teaching until 
the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which 
you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he ; 
then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad com¬ 
pany can he ever quite lose the benefit. But your propositions 
run out of one ear as they ran in at the other. We see it adver¬ 
tised that Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the Fourth of 
July, and Mr. Hand before the Mechanics’ Association, and we 
do not go thither, because we know that these gentlemen will 
not communicate their own character and experience to the 
company. If we had reason to expect such a confidence, we 
should go through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick 
would be carried in litters. But a public oration is an esca¬ 
pade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communi¬ 
cation, not a speech, not a man. 

A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We 
have yet to learn, that the thing uttered in words is not there¬ 
fore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of 


296 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


oath can give it evidence. The sentence must also contain its 
own apology for being spoken. 

The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathemati¬ 
cally measurable by its depth of thought. How much water 
does it draw 'l If it awaken you to think* if it lift you from 
your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect is 
to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; if the 
pages instruct you not, they will die like flies in the hour. The 
way to speak and write what shall not go out of fashion is, to 
speak and write sincerely. The argument which has not power 
to reach my own practice, I may well doubt, will fail to reach 
yours. But take Sidney’s maxim, “ Look in thy heart, and 
write.” He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. 
That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have 
come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. The 
writer who takes his subject from his ear, and not from his 
heart, should know that lie has lost as much as he seems to 
have gained, and when the empty book has gathered all its 
praise, and half the people say, ‘ What poetry ! what genius!’ 
it still needs fuel to make fire. That only profits which is 
profitable. Life alone can impart life ; and though we should 
burst, we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. 
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up 
the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy 
readers of the hour when it appears ; but a court as of angels, 
a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be 
overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. Only those 
books come down which deserve to last. Gilt edges, vellum, 
and morocco, and presentation copies to all the libraries, will 
not preserve a book in circulation be} T ond its intrinsic date. 
It must go with all Walpole’s Noble and Royal Authors to its 
fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may endure for a night, 
but Moses and Homer stand forever. There are not in the 
world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and 
understand Plato: never enough to pay for an edition of his 
-works; yet to every generation these come duly down, for the 
sake of those few persons, as if God brought them in his hand. 
“ No book,” said Bentley, “ was ever written down by any but 
itself.” The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort 
friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the in¬ 
trinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of 
man. “ Do not trouble yourself too much about the light on 
your statue,” said Michael Angelo to the young sculptor ; “the 
light of the public square will test its value.” 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


297 


In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the 
depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great 
man knew not that he was great. It took a century or Two 
for that fact to appear. What he did, he did because lie must; 
it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the 
circumstances of the moment. But now, everything he did, 
even to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, looks 
large, all-related, and is called an institution. 

These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the 
genius of nature ; they show the direction of the stream. But 
the stream is blood ; every drop is alive. Truth has not single 
victories ; all things are its organs,—not only dust and stones, 
but errors and lies. The laws of disease, physicians say, are 
as beautiful as the laws of health. Our philosophy is affirma¬ 
tive, and readily accepts the testimony of negative facts, as 
every shadow points to the sun. By a divine necessity, every 
fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony. 

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugi¬ 
tive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing, the inti¬ 
mated purpose, expresses character. If you act, you show 
character; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it. You 
think, because you have spoken nothing when others spoke, 
and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on 
slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the 
college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still ex¬ 
pected with curiosity as a reserved w r isdom. Far otherwise ; 
your silence answers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, 
and your fellow-men have learned that you cannot help them; 
for, oracles speak. Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding 
put forth her voice 1 

Dreadful limits are set in nature to the povrers of dissimu¬ 
lation. Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the 
body. Faces never lie, it is said. No man need be deceived, 
who will study the changes of expression. When a man speaks 
the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. 
When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy 
and sometimes asquint. 

I have heard an experienced counsellor say, that he never 
feared the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not believe 
in his heart that his client ought to have a verdict. If he 
does not believe it, his unbelief will appear to the jury, despite 
all his protestations, and will become their unbelief. This is 
that law whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, sets us in 
13 * 


298 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


the same state of mind wherein the artist was when he made 
it. That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say, 
though we may repeat the words never so often. It was this 
conviction which Swedenborg expressed, when he described a 
group of persons in the spiritual world endeavoring in vain to 
articulate a proposition which they did not believe ; but they 
could not, though they twisted and folded their lips even to 
indignation. 

A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all curi¬ 
osity concerning other people’s estimate of us, and all fear of 
remaining unknown is not less so. If a man know that he can 
do anything, — that he can do it better than any one else, — he 
has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. 
The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly 
that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged 
and stamped. In every troop of boys that whoop and run in 
each yard and square, a new-comer is as well and accurately 
weighed in the course of a few days, and stamped with his 
right number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his 
strength, speed, and temper. A stranger comes from a dis¬ 
tant school, with better dress, with trinkets in his pockets, 
with airs and pretensions : an older boy says to himself, ‘ It’s 
of no use ; we shall find him out to-morrow.’ ‘ What has he 
done 1 ’ is the divine question which searches men, and trans¬ 
pierces every false reputation. A fop may sit in any chair of 
the world, nor be distinguished for his hour from Homer and 
Washington; but there need never be any doubt concerning 
the respective ability of human beings. Pretension may sit 
still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real 
greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back 
Xerxes, nor Christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. 

As much virtue as there is, so much appears ; as much 
goodness as there is, so much reverence it commands. All the 
devils respect virtue. The high, the generous, the self-devoted 
sect will always instruct and command mankind. Never was 
a sincere word utterly lost. Never a magnanimity fell to the 
ground, but there is some heart to greet and accept it unex¬ 
pectedly. A man passes for that he is worth. What he is 
engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in 
letters of light. Concealment avails him nothing; boast¬ 
ing nothing. There is confession in the glances of our 
eyes ; in our smiles; in salutations ; and the grasp of hands. 
His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. Men 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


299 


know not why they do not trust him ; but they do not trust 
him. His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression 
in his cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on 
the back of the head, and writes 0 fool! fool! on the forehead 
of a king. 

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it. A 
man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every 
grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a solitary eater, 
but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken complexion, 
a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the want of due knowl¬ 
edge, — all blab. Can-a cook, a Chiflinch, an Iachimo be mis¬ 
taken for Zeno or Paul 1 Confucius exclaimed : “ How can a 
man be concealed ! How can a man be concealed ! ” 

On the other hand, the hero fears not, that, if he withhold 
the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and 
unloved. One knows it, — himself, — and is pledged by it to 
sweetness of peace, and to nobleness of aim, which will prove 
in the end a better proclamation of it than the relating of the 
incident. Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of 
things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It con¬ 
sists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with 
sublime propriety God is described as saying, I AM. 

The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not 
seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness 
out of the path of the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our 
wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord’s power, and 
learn that truth alone makes rich and great. 

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not 
having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own 
act 1 Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love has 
come to see him, in thee, its lowest organ. Or why need you 
torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you 
have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts and 
salutations heretofore ? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine 
with real light, and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. 
Common men are apologies for men ; they bow the head, ex¬ 
cuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appear¬ 
ances, because the substance is not. 

We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of 
magnitude. We call the poet inactive, because he is not a 
president, a merchant, or a porter. We adore an institution, 
and do not see that it is founded on a thought which w r c have. 
But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of our life 


300 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our mar¬ 
riage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent 
thought by the wayside as we walk ; in a thought which re¬ 
vises our entire manner of life, and says, ‘ Thus hast thou 
done, but it were better thus.’ And all our after 3 ’ears, like 
menials, serve and wait on this, and, according to their ability, 
execute its will. This revisal or correction is a constant force, 
which, as a tendency, reaches through our lifetime. The ob¬ 
ject of the man, the aim of these moments, is to make day¬ 
light shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole 
being without obstruction, so that, on what point soever of his 
doing your eye falls, it shall report truly of his character, 
whether it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his so¬ 
ciety, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now he is not ho¬ 
mogeneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse ; 
there are no thorough lights ; but the eye of the beholder is 
puzzled, detecting many unlike tendencies, and a life not yet 
at one. 

Why should we make it a point with our false modesty to 
disparage that man we are, and that form of being assigned 
to us 1 A good man is contented. I love and honor Epami- 
nondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I hold it more 
just to love the world of this hour, than the world of his hour. 
Nor can you, if 1 am true, excite me to the least uneasiness 
by saying, ‘ He acted, and thou sittest still.’ I see action to 
be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. 
Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would have 
sat still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven 
is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. 
Why should we be busybodies and superserviceable 1 Action 
and inaction are alike to the true. One piece of the tree is 
cut for a weathercock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge; 
the virtue of the wood is apparent in both. 

I desire not to -disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here 
certainly shows me that the soul had need of an organ here. 
Shall I not assume the post % Shall I skulk and dodge and 
duck with my unseasonable apologies and vain modesty, and 
imagine my being here impertinent 'i less pertinent than 
Epaminondas or Homer being there 1 and that the soul did 
not know its own needs ? Besides, without any reasoning on 
the matter, I have no discontent. The good soul nourishes 
me, and unlocks new magazines of power and enjoyment to 
me every day. I will not meanly decline the immensity of 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 301 

good, because I have heard that it has come to others in an¬ 
other shape. 

Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action ? 
’T is a trick of the senses, — no more. We know that the an¬ 
cestor of every action is a thought. The poor mind does not 
seem to itself to be anything, unless it have an outside badge, 
— some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic prayer¬ 
meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, or a 
high office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action to testify 
that it is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, 
and is Nature. To think is to act. 

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. 
All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of 
being inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses the sun 
and moon. Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let me heed 
my duties. Why need I go gadding into the scenes and philos¬ 
ophy of Greek and Italian history, before I have justified my¬ 
self to my benefactors h How dare I read Washington’s cam¬ 
paigns, when I have not answered the letters of my own cor¬ 
respondents I Is not that a just objection to much of our 
reading h It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze 
after our neighbors. It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunt¬ 
ing,— 

“ He knew not what to say, and so he swore.” 

I may say it of our preposterous use of books, — He knew 
not what to do, and so he read. I can think of nothing to fill 
my time with, and I find the Life of Brant. It is a very ex¬ 
travagant compliment to pay to Brant, or to General Schuyler, 
or to General Washington. My time should be as good as 
their time, — my facts, my net of relations, as good as theirs, 
or either of theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that 
other idlers, if they choose, may compare my texture with the 
texture of these and find it identical with the best. 

This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, 
this under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the 
fact of an identical nature. Bonaparte knew but one merit, 
and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the 
good astronomer, the good poet, the good player. The poet 
uses the names of Caesar, of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Bel- 
isarius ; the painter uses the conventional story of the Virgin 
Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not, therefore, defer to the 
nature of these accidental men, of these stock heroes. If the 
poet write a true drama, then he is Caesar, and not the player 


302 


SPIRITUAL LAWS. 


of Caesar; then the selfsame strain of thought, emotion as 
pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, mounting, extravagant, 
and a heart as great, self-sufficing, dauntless, which on the 
waves of its love and hope can uplift all that is reckoned solid 
and precious in the world, — palaces, gardens, money, navies, 
kingdoms, — marking its own incomparable worth by the slight 
it casts on these gauds of men, — these all are his, and by the 
power of these he rouses the nations. Let a man believe in 
God, and not in names and places and persons. Let the great 
soul incarnated in some womans form, poor and sad and sin¬ 
gle, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, and sweep cham¬ 
bers and scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams cannot be 
muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appear 
supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human 
life, and all people will get mops and brooms ; until, lo ! sud¬ 
denly the great soul has enshrined itself in some other form, 
and done some other deed, and that is now the flower and 
head of all living nature. 

We are the photometers, we the irritable gold-leaf and tin- 
foil that measure the accumulations of the subtle element. 
We know the authentic effects of the true fire through every 
one of its million disguises. 


LOVE. 

—*— 


44 1 was as a gem concealed; 

Me my burning ray revealed.” 

Koran » 






LOVE. 



VERY promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; 


IV each of its joys ripens into a new want. Nature, uncon- 
tamable, flowing, forelooking, in the first sentiment of kind¬ 
ness anticipates already a benevolence which shall lose all par¬ 
ticular regards in its general light. The introduction to 
this felicity is in a private and tender relation of one to one, 
which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a cer¬ 
tain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on a man at one pe¬ 
riod, and works a revolution in his mind and body; unites him 
to his race, pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, 
carries him with new sympathy into nature, enhances the 
power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his charac¬ 
ter heroic and sacred attribute, establishes marriage, and 
gives permanence to human society. 

The natural association of the sentiment of love with the 
heyday of the blood seems to require, that in order to portray 
it in vivid tints, which every youth and maid should confess 
to be true to their throbbing experience, one must not be too 
old. The delicious fancies of youth reject the least savor of a 
mature philosophy, as chilling with age and pedantry their 
purple bloom. And, therefore, I know I incur the imputa¬ 
tion of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those who 
compose the Court and Parliament of Love. But from these 
formidable censors I shall appeal to my seniors. For it is to 
be considered that this passion of which we speak, though it 
begin with the young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather suf¬ 
fers no one who is truly its servant to grow old, but makes 
the aged participators of it, not less than the tender maiden, 
though in a different and nobler sort. For it is a fire that, 
kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private 
bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private 
heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon 


T 



306 


LOVE. 


multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of 
all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its gen¬ 
erous flames. It matters not, therefore, whether we attempt to 
describe the passion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. 
He who paints it at the first period will lose some of its later, he 
who paints it at the last, some of its earlier traits. Only it is to 
be hoped that, by patience and the Muses’ aid, we may attain to 
that inward view of the law, which shall describe a truth ever 
young and beautiful, so central that it shall commend itself to 
the eye, at whatever angle beholden. 

And the first condition is, that we must leave a too close 
and lingering adherence to facts, and study the sentiment as 
it appeared in hope and not in history. For each man sees 
his own life defaced and disfigured, as the life of man is not, 
to his imagination. Each man sees over his own experience 
1 a certain stain of error, whilst that of other men looks fair 
and ideal. Let any man go back to those delicious relations 
which make the beauty of his life, which have given him sin- 
cerest instruction and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. 
Alas! I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in 
mature life the remembrances of budding joy, and cover every 
beloved name. Everything is beautiful seen from the point 
of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if seen as experi¬ 
ence. Details are melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. 
In the actual world — the painful kingdom of time and place 
— dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the 
ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the 
Muses sing. But grief cleaves to names, and persons, and the 
partial interests of to-day and yesterday. 

The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which 
this topic of personal relations usurps in the conversation of 
society. What do we wish to know of any worthy person so 
much, as how he has sped in the history of this sentiment ? 
What books in the circulating libraries circulate ? How we 
glow over these novels of passion, when the stoi*y is told with 
any spark of truth and nature ! And what fastens attention, 
in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection 
between two parties'? Perhaps we never saw them before, 
and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange 
a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer 
strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest inter¬ 
est in the development of the romance. All mankind love a 
lover. The earliest demonstrations of complacency and kind- 


LOVE. 


307 

ness are nature’s most winning pictures. It is the dawn of 
civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. The rude village 
boy teases the girls about the school-house door; but to-day 
he comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child dis¬ 
posing her satchel; he holds her books to help her, and in¬ 
stantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him 
infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of 
girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him ; and 
these two little neighbors, that were so close just now, have 
learned to respect each other’s personality. Or who can avert 
his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways of 
school-girls who go into the country shops to buy a skein 
of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an hour about noth¬ 
ing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the vil¬ 
lage they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and 
without any coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman 
flows out in this pretty gossip. The girls may have little beau¬ 
ty, yet plainly do they establish between them and the good 
boy the most agreeable, confiding relations, what with their 
fun and their earnest, about Edgar, and Jonas, and Almira, 
and who was invited to the party, and who danced at the dan¬ 
cing-school, and when the singing-school would begin, and 
other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. By and 
by that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he 
know where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without any 
risk such as Milton deplores as incident to scholars and great 
men. 

I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my 
reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the 
personal relations. But now I almost shrink at the remem¬ 
brance of such disparaging words. For persons are love’s world, 
and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the 
young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love with¬ 
out being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught 
derogatory to the social instincts. For, though the celestial 
rapture falling out of heaven seizes only upon those of tender 
age, and although a beauty overpowering all analysis or com¬ 
parison, and putting, us quite beside ourselves, we can seldom 
see after thirty years, yet the remembrance of these visions 
outlasts all other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on 
the oldest brows. But here is a strange fact; it may seem to 
many men, in revising their experience, that they have no fairer 
page in their life’s book than the delicious memory of some 


303 


LOVE. 


passages wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft sur¬ 
passing the deep attraction of its own truth to a parcel of ac¬ 
cidental and trivial circumstances. In looking backward, they 
may find that several things which were not the charm have 
more reality to this groping memory than the charm itself 
which embalmed them. But be our experience in particulars 
what it may, no man ever forgot the visitations of that power 
to his heart and brain, which created all things new; which 
was the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art; which made 
the face of nature radiant with purple light; the morning and 
the night varied enchantments ; when a single tone of one voice 
could make the heart bound, and the most trivial circumstance 
associated with one form is put in the amber of memory ; when 
he became all eye when one was present, and all memory when 
one was gone : when the youth becomes a watcher of windows, 
and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a 
carriage ; when no place is too solitary, and none too silent, for 
him who has richer company and sweeter conversation in his 
new thoughts, than any old friends, though best and purest, 
can give liim; for the figures, the motions, the words of the 
beloved object are not like other images written in water, but, 
as Plutarch said, “ enamelled in fire,” and make the study of 
midnight. 

“ Thou art not gone being gone, where’er thou art, 

Thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.” 

In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the rec¬ 
ollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but 
must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear ; for he touched 
the secret of the matter, who said of love, 

“ All other pleasures are not worth its pains ”; 
and when the day was not long enough, but the night, too, must 
be consumed in keen recollections; when the head boiled all 
night on the pillow with the generous deed it resolved on; when 
the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters, 
and the flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song ; when 
all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and wo¬ 
men running to and fro in the streets mere pictures. 

The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all 
things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every 
bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. 
The notes are almost articulate. The clouds have faces as he 
looks on them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass, and 
the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he almost fears 


LOVE. 


309 


to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. Yet 
nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds 
a dearer home than with men. 

“ Fountain-heads and pathless groves, 

Places which pale passion loves, 

Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
Are safely housed, save bats and owls, 

A midnight bell, a passing groan, — 

These are the sounds we feed upon.” 

Behold there in the wood the fine madman. He is a palace 
of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man ; he 
walks with arms akimbo ; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass 
and the trees ; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and 
the lily in his veins; and he talks with the brook that wets 
his foot. 

The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty 
have made him love music and verse. It is a fact often ob¬ 
served, that men have written good verses under the inspiration 
of passion, who cannot write well under any other circum¬ 
stances. 

The like force has the passion over all his nature. It ex¬ 
pands the sentiment; it makes the clown gentle, and gives the 
coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse 
a heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have the 
countenance of the beloved object. In giving him to another, 
it still more gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new 
perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solem¬ 
nity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to 
his family and society ; he is somewhat; he is a person ; he is 
a soul. 

And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that 
influence which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, 
whose revelation to man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun 
wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases everybody with it 
and with themselves, seems sufficient to itself. The lover 
cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. Like 
a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing loveliness is 
society for itself, and she teaches his eye why Beauty was 
pictured with Loves and Graces attending her steps. Her ex¬ 
istence makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all other 
persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, she in¬ 
demnifies him by carrying out her own being into somewhat 
impersonal, large, mundane, so that the maiden stands to him 
for a representative of all select things and virtues. For that 


310 


LOVE. 


reason, the lover never sees personal resemblances in his 
mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her 
a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her 
blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer even¬ 
ings and diamond mornings, to rainbows, and the song of birds. 

The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. Who 
can analyze the nameless charm which glances from one and 
another face and form 1 We are touched with emotions of 
tenderness and complacency, but we cannot find whereat this 
dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. It is destroyed 
for the imagination by any attempt to refer it to organization. 
Nor does it point to any relations of friendship or love known 
and described in society, but, as it seems to me, to a quite 
other and unattainable sphere, to relations of transcendent 
delicacy and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and 
foreshow. We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like 
opaline dovcs’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Here¬ 
in it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this 
rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and 
use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said 
to music, “ Away ! away ! thou speakest to me of things which 
in all my endless life I have not found, and shall not find.” 
The same fluency may be observed in every work of the plastic 
arts. The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be in¬ 
comprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can 
no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but de¬ 
mands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what 
it is in the act of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is 
always represented in a transition from that which is repre¬ 
sentable to the senses, to that which is not. Then first it 
ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. And 
of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, 
but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after 
the unattainable. Concerning it, Landor inquires “ whether 
it is not to be referred to some purer state of sensation and 
existence.” 

In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming and 
itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end ; when it becomes a 
stor}^ without an end ; when it suggests gleams and visions, 
and not earthly satisfactions ; when it makes the beholder feel 
his unworthiness ; when he cannot feel his right to it, though 
he w T ere Caesar ; he cannot feel more right to it than to the 
firmament and the splendors of a sunset. 


LOVE. 


311 


Hence arose the saying, “ If I love you, what is that to 
you We say so, because we feel that what we love is not 
in your will, but above it. It is not you but your radiance. 
It is that which you know not in yourself, and can never know. 

This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty which 
the ancient writers delighted in ; for they said that the soul 
of man, embodied here on earth, went roaming up and down 
in quest of that other world of its own, out of which it came 
into this, but was soon stupefied by the light of the natural 
sun, and unable to see any other objects than those of this 
world, which are but shadows of real things. Therefore, the 
Deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it may 
avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its recollection of the 
celestial good and fair; and the man beholding such a person 
in the female sex runs to her, and finds the highest joy in con¬ 
templating the form, movement, and intelligence of this per¬ 
son, because it suggests to him the presence of that which in¬ 
deed is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. 

If, however, from too much conversing with material objects, 
the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, 
it reaped nothing but sorrow ; body being unable to fulfil the 
promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint 
of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his 
mind, the soul passes through the body, and falls to admire 
strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another 
in their discourses and their actions, then they pass to the 
true palace of beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, 
and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun 
puts out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure 
and hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself 
excellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to a 
warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of 
them. Then he passes from loving them in one to loving 
them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door 
through which he enters to the society of all true and pure 
souls. In the particular society of his mate, he attains a 
clearer sight of any spot, any taint, which her beauty has 
contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and 
this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offence, 
to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give 
to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And, be¬ 
holding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and 
separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint 


312 


/ 


LOVE. 

which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the 
highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by 
steps on this ladder of created souls. 

Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all 
ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plu¬ 
tarch, and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo, and 
Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke 
to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with 
words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is 
prowling in the cellar, so that its gravest discourse has a savor 
of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism 
intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the 
hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage 
signifies nothing but a housewife’s thrift, and that woman’s life 
has no other aim. 

But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene 
in our play. In the procession of the soul from within out¬ 
ward, it enlarges its circles ever, like the pebble .thrown into 
the pond, or the light proceeding from an orb. The rays of 
the soul alight first on things nearest, on every utensil and toy, 
on nurses and domestics, on the house, and yard, and passen¬ 
gers, on the circle of household acquaintance, on politics, and 
geography, and history. But things are ever grouping them¬ 
selves according to higher or more interior laws. Neighbor¬ 
hood, size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their 
power over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing 
for harmony between the soul and the circumstance, the pro¬ 
gressive, idealizing instinct, predominate later, and the step 
backward from the higher to the lower relations is impossible. 
Thus even love, which is the deification of persons, must be¬ 
come more impersonal every day. Of this at first it gives no 
hint. Little think the youth and maiden who are glan¬ 
cing at each other across crowded rooms, with eyes so full of 
mutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to pro¬ 
ceed from this new, quite external stimulus. The work of 
vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf- 
buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to acts of 
courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to plighting troth, 
and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. 
The soul is wholly embodied, and the body is wholly ensouled. 

“ Her pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 

That one might almost say her body "thought.” 


LOVE. 


313 


Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the 
heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no 
more, than Juliet, — than Romeo. Night, day, studies, tal¬ 
ents, kingdoms, religion, are all contained in this form full of 
soul, in this soul which is all form. The lovers delight in en¬ 
dearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. 
When alone, they solace themselves with the remembered 
image of the other. Does that other see the same star, the 
same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same emo¬ 
tion, that now delight me ? They try and weigh their affec¬ 
tion, and, adding up costly advantages, friends, opportunities, 
properties, exult in discovering that willingly, joyfully, they 
would give all as a ransom for the beautiful, the beloved head, 
not one hair of which shall be harmed. But the lot of hu¬ 
manity is on these children. Danger, sorrow, and pain arrive 
to them, as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants with 
Eternal Power in behalf of this dear mate. The union which 
is thus effected, and which adds a new value to every atom in 
nature, for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole 
web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new 
and sweeter element, is yet a temj)orary state. Not always 
can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in 
another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay. It 
arouses itself at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts 
on the harness, and aspires to vast and universal aims. The 
soul which is in the soul of each, craving a perfect beatitude, 
detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion in the be¬ 
havior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and 
pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of 
loveliness, signs of virtue ; and these virtues are there, how¬ 
ever eclipsed. They appear and reappear, and continue to at¬ 
tract ; but the regard changes, quits the sign, and attaches to 
the substance. This repairs the wounded ‘affection. Mean¬ 
time, as life wears on, it proves a game of permutation and 
combination of all possible positions of the parties, to employ all 
the resources of each, and acquaint each with the strength and 
weakness of the other. For it is the nature and end of this 
relation, that they should represent the human race to each 
other. All that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, 
is cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of woman. 

“ The person love does to us fit, 

Like manna, has the taste of all in it.” 

The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. The 

VOL. I. 14 


314 


LOVE. 


A 




angels that inhabit this temple of the body appear at the win¬ 
dows, and the gnomes and vices also. By all the virtues they 
are united. If there be virtue, all the vices are known as 
such ; they confess and flee. Their once flaming regard is so¬ 
bered by time in either breast, and, losing in violence what it 
gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good understanding. 
They resign each other, without complaint, to the good offices 
which man and woman are severally appointed to discharge in 
time, and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight 
of its object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether 
present or absent, of each other’s designs. At last they dis¬ 
cover that all which at first drew them together — those once 
sacred features, that magical play of charms — was deciduous, 
had a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house 
was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart, 
from year to year, is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared 
from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. Looking 
at these aims with which two persons, a man and a woman, so 
variously and correlatively gifted, are shut up in one house to 
spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, I do not won¬ 
der at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies this crisis 
from early infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the in¬ 
stincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature, and intellect, and 
art emulate each other in the gifts and the melody they bring 
to the epithalamium. 

Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, 
nor person, nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom 
everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We 
are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our 
permanent state. But we are often made to feel that our af¬ 
fections are but tents of a night. Though slowly and with 
pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of 
thought do. There are moments when the affections rule and 
absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent on a person 
or persons. But in health the mind is presently seen again, — 
its overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, 
and the warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, 
must lose their finite character and blend with God, to attain 
their own perfection. But we. need not fear that we can lose 
anything by the progress of the soul. The soul may be 
trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive 
as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by 
what is more beautiful, and so on forever. 


FRIENDSHIP. 

— «— 


A rudely drop of manly blood 
The surging sea outweighs, 

The world uncertain comes and goes, 

The lover rooted stays. 

I fancied he was fieri, 

And. after many a year. 

Glowed unexhausted kindliness 
Like daily sunrise there. 

My careful heart was free again,— 

O friend, my bosom said, 

Through thee alone the sky is arched, 
Through thee the rose is red, 

All things through thee take nobler form, 
And look beyond the earth, 

The mill-round of our fate appears 
A sun-path in thy worth. 

Me too thy nobleness has taught 
To master my despair: 

The fountains of my hidden life 
Are through thy friendship fair. 


/ 






FRIENDSHIP. 


W E have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. 

Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds 
the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element 
of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in 
houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and 
who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in 
church, whom, though silently, w r e warmly rejoice to be with ! 
Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart 
knoweth. 

The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a 
certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, 
the emotions of benevolence and complacency which are felt 
towards others are likened to the material effects of fire; so 
swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering, are 
these fine inward irradiations. From the highest degree of 
passionate love, to the lowest degree of good-will, they make 
the sweetness of life. 

Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affec¬ 
tion. The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of 
meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy 
expression ; but it is necessary to w r rite a letter to a friend, — 
and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on 
every hand, with chosen words. See, in any house where vir¬ 
tue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the approach 
of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and 
announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain in¬ 
vades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings 
fear to the good hearts that would welcome him. The house is 
dusted, all things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged 
for the new, and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of 
a commended stranger, only the good report is told by others, 



318 


FKIENDSHIP. 


only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to us for 
humanity. He is what we wish. Having imagined and in¬ 
vested him, we ask how we should stand related in conversa¬ 
tion and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. 
The same idea exalts conversation with him. We talk better 
than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer 
memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. 
For long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, 
rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experi¬ 
ence, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and ac¬ 
quaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers. 
But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, 
his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. 
He has heard the first, the last, and best he will ever hear 
from us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, mis¬ 
apprehension are old acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he 
may get the order, the dress, and the dinner, — but the throb¬ 
bing of the heart, and the communications of the soul, no more. 

What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make 
a young world for me again? What so delicious as a just and 
firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling? How 
beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps 
and forms of the gifted and the true ? The moment we in¬ 
dulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no 
winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish, — all 
duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the 
forms all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be as¬ 
sured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its 
friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thou¬ 
sand years. 

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my 
friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beauti¬ 
ful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts ? I chide 
society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as 
not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from 
time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who under¬ 
stands me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time. Nor 
is nature so poor but she gives me this joy several times, and 
thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of rela¬ 
tions ; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate them¬ 
selves, we shall by and by stand in a new world of our own 
creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary 
globe. My friends have come to me unsought. The great 


FRIENDSHIP. 


319 


God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity 
of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I but the 
Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls 
of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at 
which he usually connives, and now makes many one. High 
thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world 
for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of 
all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard, — 
poetry without stop, — hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still flow¬ 
ing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still. Will these, too, 
separate themselves from me again, or some of theml I 
know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them is so 
pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my 
life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on 
whomsoever is as noble as these men and women, wherever I 
may be. 

I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. 
It is almost dangerous to me to “ crush the sweet poison of 
misused wine ” of the affections. A new person is to me a 
great event, and hinders me from sleep. I have often had 
fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious 
hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit. 
Thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. 
I must feel pride in my friend’s accomplishments as if they 
were mine, — and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly 
wdien he is praised, as the lover when he hears applause of 
his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our 
friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his 
nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his, — 
his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments, — fancy 
enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his 
mouth. 

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without 
their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like 
the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. The 
lover, beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily 
that which he worships; and in the golden hour of friendship, 
we are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. We 
doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he 
shines, and afterwards worship the form to which w T e have as¬ 
cribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does 
not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science all per¬ 
sons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. 


320 


FRIENDSHIP. 


Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical 
foundation of this Etysian temple 1 Shall I not be as real as the 
things I see 1 If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what 
they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their ap¬ 
pearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. 
The root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for 
chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must 
hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing 
reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at our ban¬ 
quet. A man who stands united with his thought conceives 
magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal suc¬ 
cess, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No 
advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for 
him. I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than 
on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tanta¬ 
mount to mine. Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, 
moon-like ray. I hear what you say of the admirable parts 
and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see well that 
for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is at 
last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, 0 friend, that 
the vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its 
pied and painted immensity, — thee, also, compared with 
whom all else is shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as 
Justice is, — thou art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of 
that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already thou art 
seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth 
friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the 
germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf! The law of 
nature is alternation forevermore. Each electrical state super¬ 
induces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, 
that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; 
and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversa¬ 
tion or society. This method betrays itself along the whole 
history of our personal relations. The instinct of affection 
revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning 
sense of insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every 
man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he 
should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like 
this to each new candidate for his love. 

Dear Friend : — 

If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match 
my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles in 


FRIENDSHIP. 


321 


relation to thy comings and goings. T am not very wise ; my 
moods are quite attainable ; and I respect thy genius ; it is to 
me as yet unfathomed ; yet dare I not presume in thee a per¬ 
fect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious tor¬ 
ment. Thine ever, or never. 

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, 
and not for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to 
weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short 
and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture 
of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human 
heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one 
w r eb with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have 
aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. 
"We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, 
which many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek 
our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which 
would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed 
all over with subtle antagonisms, w r hich as soon as we meet, 
begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost 
all people descend to meet. All association must be a compro¬ 
mise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the 
flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they ap¬ 
proach each other. ,What a perpetual disappointment is actual 
society, even of the virtuous and gifted ! After interviews 
have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tor¬ 
mented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable 
apathies, by epilepsies of w T it and of animal spirits, in the 
heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play 
us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. 

I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no differ¬ 
ence how many friends I have, and what content I can find in 
conversing with each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. 
If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy I find in 
all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I should hate my¬ 
self, if then I made my other friends my asylum. 

“ The valiant warrior famoused for fight, 

After a hundred victories, once foiled, 

Is from the book of honor razed quite, 

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.” 

Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and 
apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is 
protected from premature ripening. It would be lost, if it 
14* u 


322 


FRIENDSHIP. 


knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough 
to know and own it. Respect the naturlangsamJceit which 
hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration, 
in which Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. The good 
spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price of rashness. 
f Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the 
total w T orth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in 
our regards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our 
friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the 
breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations. 

The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I 
leave, for the time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to 
speak of that select and sacred relation which is a kind of abso¬ 
lute, and which even leaves the language of love suspicious and 
common, so much is this purer, and nothing is so much divine. 

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with rough¬ 
est courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads 
or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after 
so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of 
ourselves 1 Not one step has man taken toward the solution 
of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly 
stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of 
joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my broth¬ 
er’s soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought 
is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a 
friend ! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to 
entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemni¬ 
ty of that relation, and honor its law ! He who offers himself 
a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to 
the great games, where the first-born of the world are the com¬ 
petitors. He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, 
Danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth 
enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his 
beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of for¬ 
tune may be present or absent, but all the speed in that con¬ 
test depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. 
There are two elements that go to the composition of friend¬ 
ship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in 
either, no reason why either should be first named. One is 
Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. 
Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the 
presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even 
those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and sec- 


FRIENDSHIP. 


323 


ond thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him 
with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical 
atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like dia¬ 
dems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being per¬ 
mitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or con¬ 
form unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a 
second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the ap¬ 
proach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amuse¬ 
ments, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a 
hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious 
frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment 
and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he 
encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first 
he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persist¬ 
ing, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this 
course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of 
his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would 
think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with 
any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was 
constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain-dealing, and 
what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he 
had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society 
shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand 
in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of 
insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every! 
man we meet requires some civility, — requires to be humored ; 
he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or phi¬ 
lanthropy in his head, that is not to be questioned, and which 
spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man 
who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me 
entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. 
A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who 
alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can 
affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the sem¬ 
blance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, re¬ 
iterated in a foreign form •, so that a friend may well be reck¬ 
oned the masterpiece of nature. 

The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are 
holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by 
fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by 
every circumstance, and badge and trifle, but we can scarce 
believe that so much character can subsist in another as to 
draw' us by love. Can another be so blessed, and we so pure, 


324 


FRIENDSHIP. 


that we can offer him tenderness ? When a man becomes 
dear to me, I have touched the goal of fortune. I find very little 
written directly to the heart of this matter in books. And 
yet I have one text which I cannot choose but remember. My 
author says : “ I offer myself faintly and bluntly to those 
whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to him to 
whom I am the most devoted.” I wish that friendship should 
have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself 
on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. I wish it to 
be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub. We chide 
the citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is an ex¬ 
change of gifts, of useful loans ; it is good neighborhood ; it 
watches with the sick; it holds the pall at the funeral ; and 
quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the relation. 
But though we cannot find the god under this disguise of a 
sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot forgive the poet if 
he spins his thread too fine, and does not substantiate his ro¬ 
mance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity, 
and pity. PI hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to 
signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the com¬ 
pany of plough-boys and tin-pedlers, to the silken and per¬ 
fumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a friv¬ 
olous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best 
taverns^ The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict 
and homely that can be joined ; more strict than any of 
which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through 
all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for 
serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also 
for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and perse¬ 
cution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the 
trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily 
needs and offices of man’s life, and embellish it by courage, 
wisdom, and unity. It should never fall into something usual 
and settled, but should be alert and inventive, and add rhyme 
and reason to what was drudgery. 

Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and cost' 
ly, each so well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal 
so circumstanced (for even in that particular, a poet says, 
love demands that the parties be altogether paired), that its 
satisfaction can very seldom be assured. It cannot subsist in 
its perfection, say some of those who are learned in this warm 
lore of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not quite so 
strict in my terms, perhaps because I have never known so 


FRIENDSHIP. 


325 


high a fellowship as others. I please my imagination more 
with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to 
each other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. 
But I find this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, 
which is the practice and consummation of friendship. Do 
not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and 
bad. You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at 
several times with two several men, but let all three of you 
come together, and you shall not have one new and hearty word. 
Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part 
in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. In 
good company, there is never such discourse between two, 
across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. 
In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a 
social soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses 
there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondness¬ 
es of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, 
but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail 
on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited 
to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, 
destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which re¬ 
quires an absolute running of two souls into one. 

No two men but, being left alone with each other, enter 
into simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that determines 
which two shall converse. Unrelated men give little joy to 
each other; will never suspect the latent powers of each. We 
talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were 
a permanent property in some individuals. Conversation is 
an evanescent relation, — no more. A man is reputed to have 
thought and eloquence ; he cannot, for all that, say a word to 
his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much 
reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the 
shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who 
enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue. 

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and un¬ 
likeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of 
consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of 
the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a 
word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by 
antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant 
to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that 
the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly fur¬ 
therance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of con- 


326 


FRIENDSHIP. 


cession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than 
his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is 
ability to do without it. That high office requires great and 
sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be 
very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures 
mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize 
the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them. 

He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous ; who is 
sure that greatness and goodness are always economy ; who is 
not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not inter¬ 
meddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor 
expect to accelerate the births of the eternal. Friendship de¬ 
mands a religious treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, 
but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. 
Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that 
are not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must needs 
hold him close to your person. Stand aside ; give these merits 
room; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of 
your friend’s buttons, or of his thought 1 To a great heart he 
will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may 
come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to 
regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-con¬ 
founding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit. 

Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. 
Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding 
on them ? Why insist on rash personal relations with your 
friend 1 Why go to his house, and know his mother and brother 
and sisters ? Why be visited by him at your own ? Are these 
things material to our covenant ? Leave this touching and 
clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, 
a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pot¬ 
tage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences 
from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend 
be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself ? 
Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yon¬ 
der bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of 
waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but 
raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scorn¬ 
ful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on 
reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his supe¬ 
riorities ; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell 
them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee 
forever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, 


FRIENDSHIP. 


327 


and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast 
aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not 
to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a let¬ 
ter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. 
It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and 
of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines 
the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour 
out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of 
heroism have yet made good. 

Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to 
prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. 
We must be our own before we can be another’s. There is at 
least this satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin proverb : 
you can speak to your accomplice on even terms. Crimen quos 
inquinat, ceqaat. To those whom w r e admire and love, at first 
we cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in 
my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep 
peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their 
dialogue, each stands for the whole world. 

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what gran¬ 
deur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the 
whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to 
cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to 
say anything to such 1 No matter how ingenious, no matter 
how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of 
folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. 
Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and 
everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves 
of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue ; the only 
way to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer 
a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees 
the faster from you, and you shall never catch a true glance of 
his eye. We see the noble afar off’, and they repel us; why 
should we intrude h Late, — very late, — we perceive that no 
arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits of 
society, would be of any avail to establish us in such relations 
with them as we desire, — but solely the uprise of nature in 
us to the same degree it is in them ; then shall we meet 
as w'ater with v T at.er; and if we should not meet them then, 
v r e shall not want them, for we are already they. In the last 
analysis, love is only the reflection of a man’s own worthiness 
from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names wflth 
their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each 
loved his own soul. 


328 


FRIENDSHIP. 


The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the 
less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone 
in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and 
fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that 
elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are 
now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and which 
we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that the period 
of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is passed in 
solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic 
hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you al¬ 
ready see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap per¬ 
sons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us 
into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends. By per¬ 
sisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the 
great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of 
the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born 
of the world, — those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two 
w r ander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great 
show as spectres and shadows merely. 

It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as 
if so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of 
our popular views we make from insight, nature will be sure to 
bear us out in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, will 
repay us with a greater. Let us feel, if we will, the absolute 
insulation of man. We are sure that we have all in us. We 
go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, in the 
instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to our¬ 
selves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we : the Europe 
an old faded garment of dead persons ; the books their ghosts. 
Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. 
Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, 
saying, 4 Who are you] Unhand me : I will be dependent no 
more.’ Ah ! seest thou not, 0 brother, that thus we part only 
to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each 
other’s, because we are more our own I A friend is Janus¬ 
faced : he looks to the past and the future. He is the child 
of all. my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and 
the harbinger of a greater friend. 

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would 
have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We 
must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it 
on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak much with my 
friend. If he is great, he makes me so great that I cannot de- 


FRIENDSHIP. 


329 


scend to converse. In the great days, presentiments hover be¬ 
fore me in the firmament. I ought then to dedicate myself to 
them. I go in that I may seize them, I go out that I may seize 
them. I fear only that I may lose them receding into the sky 
in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. Then, 
though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them 
and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It woufd indeed 
give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this 
spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm 
sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn al¬ 
ways the vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, next week 
I shall have languid moods, when I can well afford to occupy 
myself with foreign objects ; then I shall regret the lost litera¬ 
ture of your mind, and wish you were by my side again. But 
if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only with new visions, 
not with yourself but with your lustres, and I shall not be able 
any more than now to converse with you. So I will owe to my 
friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, 
not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me 
that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from 
them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile 
and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as 
though we parted not. 

It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to 
carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspond¬ 
ence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets 
that the receiver is not capacious 'i It never troubles the sun 
that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, 
and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your great¬ 
ness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, 
he will presently pass away ; but thou art enlarged by thy own 
shining, and, ii(> longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar 
and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a dis¬ 
grace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love 
cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy ob¬ 
ject, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor 
interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much 
earth, and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things 
may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation, 
pThe essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and 
trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats 
its object as a god, that it may deify hothT] 







































PRUDENCE. 


Theme no poet gladly sung, 

Fair to old and foul to young, 
Scorn not thou the love of parts, 
And the articles of arts. 
Grandeur of the perfect sphere 
Thanks the atoms that cohere. 





PRUDENCE. 


W HAT right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I 
have little, and that of the negative sort 1 My pru¬ 
dence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the in¬ 
venting of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in 
gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend well, 
no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden dis¬ 
covers that I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, 
and hate lubricity, and people without perception. Then I 
have the same title to write on prudence, that I have to write 
on poetry or holiness. We write from aspiration and antago¬ 
nism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities 
which we do not possess. The poet admires the man of energy 
and tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the 
bar ; and where a man is not vain and egotistic, you shall find 
what he has not by his praise. Moreover, it would be hardly 
honest in me not to balance these fine lyric words of Love 
and Friendship with words of coarser sound, and, whilst my 
debt to my senses is real and constant, not to own it in passing. 

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of 
appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It 
is God taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws 
of matter. It is content to seek health of body by complying 
with physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of 
the intellect. 

The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not 
exist for itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true pru¬ 
dence or law of shows recognizes the co-presence of other laws, 
and knows that its own office is subaltern ; knows that it is sur¬ 
face and not centre where it works. Prudence is false when de¬ 
tached. It is legitimate when it is the Natural History of 
the soul incarnate ; when it unfolds the beauty of laws with¬ 
in the narrow scope of the senses. 



334 


PRUDENCE. 


There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the 
world. It is sufficient, to our present purpose, to indicate 
three. One class live to the utility of the symbol; esteeming 
health and wealth a final good. Another class live above this 
mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet and artist, 
and the naturalist, and man of science. A third class live 
above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing 
signified ; these are wise men. The first class have common 
sense ; the second, taste; and the third, spiritual perception. 
Once in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees 
and enjoys the symbol solidly ; then also has a clear eye for 
its beauty, and, lastly, w T hilst he pitches his tent on this sacred 
volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and 
barns thereon, reverencing the splendor of the God which he 
sees bursting through each chink and cranny. 

The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings 
of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we 
possessed no other faculties than the palate, the nose, the 
touch, the eye and ear ; a prudence which adores the Rule of 
Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which sel¬ 
dom lends, and asks but one question of any project, •— Will 
it bake bread 1 This is a disease like a thickening of the skin 
until the vital organs are destroyed. But culture, revealing 
the high origin of the apparent world, and aiming at the per¬ 
fection of the man as the end, degrades everything else, as 
health and bodily life, into means. It sees prudence not to 
be a several faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue con¬ 
versing with the body and its wants. Cultivated men always 
feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the achievement of a 
civil or social measure, great personal influence, a graceful and 
commanding address, had their value as proofs of the energy 
of the spirit. If a man lose his balance, and immerse him¬ 
self in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a 
good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man. 

The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god 
of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy.' It is 
nature’s joke, and therefore literature’s. The true prudence 
limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an in¬ 
ternal and real world. This recognition once made, — the 
order of the world and the distribution of affairs and times 
being studied with the co-perception of their subordinate 
place, will reward any degree of attention. For our existence, 
thus apparently attached in nature to the sun and the 


PRUDENCE. 


335 


returning moon and the periods which they mark, — so sus¬ 
ceptible to climate and to country, so alive to social good and 
evil, so fond of splendor, and so tender to hunger and cold and 
debt, — reads all its primary lessons out of these books. 

Prudence does not go behind nature, and ask whence it is. 
It takes the laws of the world, whereby man’s being is con¬ 
ditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws, that it may enjoy 
their proper good. It respects space and time, climate, want, 
sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death. There revolve 
to give bound and period to his being, on all sides, the sun 
and moon, the great formalists in the sky : here lies stubborn 
matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. Here 
is a planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws, and 
fenced and distributed externally with civil partitions and 
properties which impose new restraints on the young inhab¬ 
itant. 

We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by 
the air which blows around us, and we are poisoned by the 
air that is too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet. Time, 
which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is 
slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is 'to be 
painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, 
or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the 
tax ; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart 
or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or 
very awkward word, — these eat up the hours. Do what we 
can, summer will have its flies: if we walk in the woods, we 
must feed mosquitoes : if we go a-fishing, we must expect a 
wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle per¬ 
sons : we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but 
still we regard the clouds and the rain. 

We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp 
the hours and years. The hard soil and four months of snow 
make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and 
abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. 
The islander may ramble all day at will. At night, he may 
sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild date-tree 
grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a table for 
his morning meal. The northerner is perforce a householder. 
He must brew, bake, salt, and preserve his food, and pile wood 
and coal. But as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay 
to, without some new acquaintance with nature ; and as nature 
is inexhaustibly significant, the inhabitants of these climates 


336 


PRUDENCE. 


have always excelled the southerner in force. Such is the 
value of these matters, that a man who knows other things 
can never know too much of these. Let him have accurate 
perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, handle ; if eyes, 
measure and discriminate; let him accept and hive every fact 
of chemistry, natural history, and economics ; the more he 
has, the less is he willing to spare any one. Time is always 
bringing the occasions that disclose their value. Some wisdom 
comes out of every natural and innocent action. The domes¬ 
tic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and 
the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, 
has solaces which others never dream of. The application of 
means to ends insures victory and the songs of victory, not 
less in a farm or a shop than in the tactics of party or of war. 
The good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of 
fire-wood in a shed, or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, 
as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Department of 
State. In the rainy day, he builds a work-bench, or gets his 
tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored with 
nails, gimlet, pincers, screw-driver, and chisel. Herein he 
tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of 
garrets, presses, and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences 
of long housekeeping. His garden or his poultry-yard tells 
him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find argument for 
optimism in the abundant flow of this saccharine element of 
pleasure in every suburb and extremity of the good world. 
Let a man keep the law, — any law, — and his way will be 
strown with satisfactions. There is more difference in the 
quality of our pleasures than in the amount. 

On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. 
If you think the senses final, obey their law. If you believe 
in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe 
on the slow tree of cause and effect. It is vinegar to the 
eyes, to deal wfith men of loose and imperfect perception. Dr. 
Johnson is reported to have said, “ If the child says he 
looked out of this window, when he looked out of that, — 
whip him.” Our American character is marked by a more 
than average delight in accurate perception, which is”shown by 
the currency of the byword, “ No mistake.” But the discom¬ 
fort of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of 
inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. The 
beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inap¬ 
titude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash 


PRUDENCE. 


337 


and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees. Our 
•words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and pleas¬ 
ant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of 
June ; yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of 
a whetstone or mower’s rifle, when it is too late in the season 
to make hay 1 ? Scatter-brained and “afternoon men” spoil 
much more than their own affair, in spoiling the temper of 
those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on some 
paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the shiftless and 
unhappy men who are not true to their senses. The last 
Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of superior understanding, 
said : “ I have sometimes remarked in the presence of great 
works of art, and just now especially, in Dresden, how much 
a certain property contributes to the effect which gives life to 
the figures, and to the life an irresistible truth. This proper¬ 
ty is the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre of 
gravity. I mean, the placing the figures firm upon their feet, 
making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot 
where they should look. Even lifeless figures, as vessels and 
stools, — let them be drawn ever so correctly, — lose all effect 
so soon as they lack the resting upon their centre of gravity, 
and have a certain swimming and oscillating appearance. The 
Raphael, in the Dresden gallery, (the only greatly affecting 
picture which I have seen,) is the quietest and most passion¬ 
less piece you can imagine ; a couple of saints who worship 
the Virgin and Child. Nevertheless, it awakens a deeper im¬ 
pression than the contortions of ten crucified martyrs. For, 
beside all the resistless beauty of form, it possesses in the 
highest degree the property of the perpendicularity of all the 
figures.” This perpendicularity we demand of all the figures 
in this picture of life. Let them stand on their feet, and not 
float and swing. Let us know where to find them. Let them 
discriminate between w T hat they remember and what they 
dreamed, use plain speech, give us facts, and honor their own 
senses with trust. 

But what man shall dare tax another with imprudence 1 
Who is prudent 1 The men we call greatest are least in this 
kingdom. There is a certain fatal dislocation in our relation 
to nature, distorting our modes of living, and making every 
law our enem} r , which seems at last to have aroused all the 
wit and virtue in the world to ponder the question of Reform. 
We must call the highest prudence to counsel, and ask why 
health and beauty and genius should now be the exception, 

VOL. I. 15 v 


338 


PRUDENCE. 


rather than the rule, of human nature? We do not know 
the properties of plants and animals and the laws of nature 
through our sympathy with the same; but this remains the 
dream of poets. Poetry and prudence should be coincident. 
Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspira¬ 
tion should not chide and insult, but should announce and 
lead, the civil code, and the day’s work. But now the two 
things seem irreconcilably parted. We have violated law up¬ 
on law, until we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we 
espy a coincidence between reason and the phenomena, we are 
surprised. Beauty should be the dowry of every man and 
woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is rare. Health or 
sound organization should be universal. Genius should be the 
child of genius, and every child should be inspired; but now 
it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. 
We call partial half-lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which 
converts itself to money; talent which glitters to-day, that it 
may dine and sleep well to-morrow; and society is officered 
by men of parts, as they are properly called, and not by divine 
men. These use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. 
Genius is always ascetic ; and piety and love. Appetite shows 
to the finer souls as a disease, and they find beauty in rites 
and bounds that resist it. 

We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality 
withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. The man of 
talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of the 
senses trivial, and to count them nothing considered with his 
devotion to his art. His art never taught him lewdness, nor 
the love of wine, nor the wish to reap where he had not sowed. 
His art is less for every deduction from his holiness, and less 
for every defect of common sense. On him who scorned the 
world, as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. He 
that despiseth small things will perish by little and little. 
Goethe’s Tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair historical 
portrait, and that is true tragedy. It does not seem to me so 
genuine grief when some tyrannous Richard the Third op¬ 
presses and slays a score of innocent persons, as when Antonio 
and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong each other. One liv¬ 
ing after the maxims of this world, and consistent and true to 
them, the other fired with all divine sentiments, yet grasping 
also at the pleasures of sense, without submitting to their law. 
That is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso’s 
is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man of genius, 


PRUDENCE. 


339 


of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-indul¬ 
gent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a “ discom¬ 
fortable cousin,” a thorn to himself and to others. 

The scholar shames us by his bifold lie. Whilst something 
higher than prudence is active, he is admirable; when com¬ 
mon sense is wanted, he is an encumbrance. Yesterday, Cse- 
sar was not so great; to-day, the felon at the gallows’ foot is 
not more miserable. Yesterday, radiant with the light of an 
ideal world, in which he lives, the first of men; and now op¬ 
pressed by wants and by sickness, for which he must thank 
himself. He resembles the pitiful drivellers, whom travellers 
describe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who 
skulk about all day, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and 
at evening, when the bazaars are open, slink to the opium- 
shop, swallow their morsel, and become tranquil and glorified 
seers. And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent 
genius, struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, 
at last sinking, chilled, exhausted, and fruitless, like a giant 
slaughtered by pins 1 

Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and 
mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in send¬ 
ing him, as hints that he must expect no other good than the 
just fruit of his own labor and self-denial'? Health, bread, 
climate, social position, have their importance, and he will 
give them their due. Let him esteem Nature a perpetual 
counsellor, and her perfections the exact measure of our devia¬ 
tions. Let him make the night night, and the day day. Let 
him control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much 
wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an 
empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it. The 
laws of the world are written out for him on every piece 
of money in his hand. There is nothing he will not be the 
better for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard ; 
or the State Street prudence of buying by the acre to sell 
by the foot; or the thrift of the agriculturist, to stick a 
tree between whiles, because it will grow whilst he sleeps ; 
or the prudence which consists in husbanding little strokes 
of the tool, little portions of time, particles of stock, and 
small gains. The eye of prudence may never shut. Iron, 
if kept at the ironmonger’s, will rust; beer, if not brewed 
in the right state of the atmosphere, will sour; timber of 
ships will rot at sea, or, if laid up high and dry, will 
strain, warp, and dry-rot; money, if kept by us, yields no 


340 


PRUDENCE. 


rent, and is liable to loss ; if invested, is liable to depreciation 
of the particular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the 
iron is white ; keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the 
scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yan¬ 
kee trade is reputed to be very much on the .extreme of this 
prudence. It takes bank-notes, — good, bad, clean, ragged, 
— and saves itself by the speed with which it passes them off. 
Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes 
go out of fashion, nor money stocks depreciate, in the few 
swift moments in which the Yankee suffers any one of them 
to remain in his possession. In skating over thin ice, our 
safety is in our speed. 

Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn 
that everything in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law 
and not by luck, and that what he sows he reaps. By diligence 
and self-command, let him put the bread he eats at his own dis¬ 
posal, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to 
other men ; for the best good of wealth is freedom. Let him 
practise the minor virtues. How much of human life is lost in 
waiting! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How 
many words and promises are promises of conversation ! let his 
be words of fate. When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of 
paper float round the globe in a pine ship, and come safe to the 
eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming population, let 
him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his being across 
all these distracting forces, and keep a slender human word 
among the storms, distances, and accidents that drive us hither 
and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one 
man reappear to redeem its pledge, after months and years, in 
the most distant climates. 

We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking 
at that only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is 
symmetrical. The prudence which secures an outward well¬ 
being is not to be studied by one set of men, whilst heroism 
and holiness are studied by another, but they are reconcilable. 
Prudence concerns the present time, persons, property, and 
existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots in the soul, 
and, if the soul were changed, -would cease to be, or would be¬ 
come some other thing, the proper administration of outward 
things will always rest on a just apprehension of their cause 
and origin, that is, the good man will be the wise man, and the 
single-hearted, the politic man. Every violation of truth is not 
only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of 


PRUDENCE. 


341 


human society. On the most profitable lie, the course of events 
presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frank¬ 
ness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their 
business a friendship. Trust men, and they will be true to you; 
treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great, though 
they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade. 

So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence 
does not consist in evasion, or in flight, but in courage. He who 
wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any seren¬ 
ity must screw himself up to resolution. Let him front the ob¬ 
ject of his worst apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly 
make his fear groundless. The Latin proverb says, that “ in 
battles the eye is first overcome.” Entire self-possession may 
make a battle very little more dangerous to life than a match 
at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers, of men 
who have seen the cannon pointed, and the fire given to it, and 
who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The terrors 
of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. 
The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews 
itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet, as under the sun 
of June. 

In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear 
comes readily to heart, and magnifies the consequence of the 
other party ; but it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually 
weak, and apparently strong. To himself, he seems weak; to 
others, formidable. You are afraid of Grim ; but Grim also is 
afraid of you. You are solicitous of the good-will of the meanest 
person, uneasy at his ill-will. But the sturdiest offender of your 
peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip up his claims, is as 
thin and timid as any ; and the peace of society is often kept, 
because, as children say, one is afraid, and the other dares not. 
Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten; bring them hand to 
hand, and they are a feeble folk. 

It is a proverb, that ‘ courtesy costs nothing ’; but calcula¬ 
tion might come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to 
be blind ; but kindness is necessary to perception ; love is not 
a hood, but an eye-water. If you meet a sectary, or a hostile 
partisan, never recognize the dividing lines ; but meet on what 
common ground remains, — if only that the sun shines, and 
the rain rains for both ; the area will widen very fast, and ere 
you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had 
fastened, have melted into air. If they set out to contend, 
Saint Paul will lie, and Saint John will hate. What low, poor, 
paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make 


342 


PRUDENCE. 


of the pure and chosen souls! They will shuffle, and crow, 
crook, and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may 
brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either 
party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So 
neither should you put yourself in a false position with your 
contemporaries, by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. 
Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, as¬ 
sume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying 
precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love 
roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity 
of a doubt. So at least shall you get an adequate deliverance. 
The natural motions of the soul are so much better than the 
voluntary ones, that you will never do yourself justice in dis¬ 
pute. The thought is not then taken hold of by the right 
handle, does not show itself proportioned, and in its true 
bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness. But 
assume a consent, and it shall presently be granted, since, 
really, and underneath their external diversities, all men are 
of one heart and mind. 

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on 
an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy 
with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and in¬ 
timacy to come. But whence and wheni To-morrow will be 
like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. 
Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us. Scarcely can 
we say, we see new men, new women, approaching us. We 
are too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of 
any greater or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of 
those affections and consuetudes that grow near us. These 
old shoes are easy to the feet. Undoubtedly, we can easily 
pick faults in our company, can easily whisper names prouder, 
and that tickle the fancy more. Every man’s imagination 
hath its friends; and life would be dearer with such compan¬ 
ions. But, if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, 
you cannot have them. If not the Deity, but our ambition, 
hews and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as 
strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds. 

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and all the 
virtues, range themselves on the side of prudence, or the art 
of securing a present well-being. I do not know if all matter 
will be found to be made of one element, as oxygen or hydro¬ 
gen, at last, but the world of manners and actions is wrought 
of one stuff, and, begin where we will, we are pretty sure in 
a short space to be mumbling our ten commandments. 


HEROISM. 


Paradise is under the shadow of swords.” 

Mahomet. 


Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, 
Sugar spends to fatten slaves, 

Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons ; 
Thunder-clouds are Jove’s festoons, 
Drooping oft in wreaths of dread 
Lightning-knotted round his head; 
The hero is not fed on sweets, 

Daily his own heart he eats; 
Chambers of the great are jails, 

And head-winds right for royal sails. 






HEROISM 


I N the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of 
gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily marked in the 
society of their age, as color is in our American population. 
When any Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio enters, though he be“ a 
stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, This is a gentleman, 
— and proffers civilities without end ; but all the rest are slag 
and refuse. In harmony with this delight in personal advan¬ 
tages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character 
and dialogue, — as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the 
Double Marriage, — wherein the speaker is so earnest and cor¬ 
dial, and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, 
on the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally 
into poetry. Among many texts, take the following. The 
Roman Martius has conquered Athens, — all but the invinci¬ 
ble spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and Dorigen, his 
wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Martius, and he 
seeks to save her husband ; but Sophocles will not ask his life, 
although assured that a word will save him, and the execution 
of both proceeds. 

“ Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 

Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 

Yonder, above, ’bout Ariadne’s crown, 

My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 

Dor. Stay, Sophocles, — with this tie up my sight; 

Let not soft nature so transformed be, 

And lose her gentler sexed humanity. 

To make me setfmy lord bleed. So, ’t is well; 

Never one object underneath the sun 
Will I behold before my Sophocles: 

Farewell; now teach tiie Romans how to die. 

Mar. Dost know what’t is to die ? 

Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, 

And, therefore, not what’t is to live; to die 
Is to begin to live. It is to end 
15 * 



346 


HEROISM. 


An old, stale, weary work, and to commence 
A newer and a better. ’T is to leave 
Deceitful knaves for the society 
Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part 
At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, 

And prove thy fortitude what then ’t will do. 

Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus ? 

Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent 
To them I ever loved best V Now I’ll kneel, 

But with my back toward thee; ’t is the last duty 
This trunk can do the gods. 

Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 

Or Martius’ heart will leap out at his mouth: 

This is a man, a woman! Kiss thy lord, 

And live with all the freedom you were wont. 

0 love! thou doubly hast afflicted me 

With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, 

My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, 

Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 

Val. What ails my brother? 

Soph. Martius, 0 Martius, 

* Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 

Dor. 0 star of Rome! what gratitude can speak 
Fit words to follow such a deed as this! 

Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 

With his disdain of fortune and of death, 

Captived himself, has captivated me. 

And though my arm hath ta’en his body here, 

His soul hath subjugated Martius’ soul. 

By Romulus, lie is all soul, I think; 

He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved; 

Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, 

And Martius walks now in captivity.” 

I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, 
or oration, that our press vents in the last few years, which 
goes to the same tune. We have a great many flutes and 
flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet, Words- 
worth’s Laodamia, and the ode of “ Dion,” and some sonnets, 
have a certain noble music; and Scott will sometimes draw a 
stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour of 
Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is 
manly and daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in 
his favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pic¬ 
tures. Earlier, Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In 
the Harlein Miscellanies, there is an account of the battle 
of Lutzen, which deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley’s 
History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of individual 
valor with admiration, all the more evident on the part of the 
narrator, that he seems to think that his place in Christian 
Oxford requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence. 
But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly 
come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him 


HEROISM. 


347 


we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminondas, the Soipio 
of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him 
than to all the ancient writers. Each of his “ Lives ” is a re¬ 
buke to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and po¬ 
litical theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, 
but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that 
book its immense fame. 

We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than 
books of political science, or of private economy. Life is a 
festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimney- 
side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front. The 
violations of the laws of nature by our predecessors and our 
contemporaries are punished in us also. The disease and‘de¬ 
formity around us certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, 
and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed such 
compound misery. A lockjaw that bends a man’s head back 
to his heels, hydrophobia, that makes him bark at his wife 
and babes; insanity, that makes him eat grass ; w T ar, plague, 
cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, w’hich, as 
it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by hu¬ 
man suffering. Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his 
own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, 
and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation. 

Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. 
Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, 
and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require 
that he should not go dancing in the w^eeds of peace, but 
warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading the 
thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, 
with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the ab¬ 
solute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behavior. 

Towards all this external evil, the man within the breast as¬ 
sumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cepe single- 
handed with the infinite army of enemies. To this military 
attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism. Its rudest 
form is the contempt for safety and ease, wdiich makes the 
attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust wffiich slights the re¬ 
straints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and pow T er 
to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such 
balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, 
and, as it w~ere, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike 
in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal disso¬ 
luteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in heroism ; 


348 


HEROISM. 


there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to know that 
other souls are of one texture with it; it has pride; it is the 
extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless, we must pro¬ 
foundly revere it. There is somewhat in great actions, which 
does not allow us to go behind them. Heroism feels and never 
reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a different 
breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual .activity 
would have modified or aven reversed the particular action, 
yet for the hero that thing he does is the highest deed, and is 
not open to the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the 
avowal of the unschooled man, that he finds a quality in him 
that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of 
hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and 
more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists. 

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and 
in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. 
Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s 
character. Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it 
does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little 
farther on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore, 
just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some 
little time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their 
acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to 
a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by 
its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own suc¬ 
cess at last, and then the prudent also extol. 

Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the 
soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of 
falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be 
inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just, 
generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, 
and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an un¬ 
daunted boldness, and of a fortitude not to be wearied out. 
Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false prudence 
which dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment 
of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its 
body. What shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums and cat’s- 
cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and cus¬ 
tard, which rack the wit of all society ? What joys has kind 
nature provided for us dear creatures ! There seems to be no 
interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is 
not master of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little 
man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so head- 


HEROISM. 


349 


long and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his 
toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food 
and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made 
happy with a little gossip or a little praise*, that the great soul 
cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. “ Indeed, 
these humble considerations make me out of love with great¬ 
ness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many 
pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that 
were the peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy 
shirts, as one for superfluity, and one other for use ! ” 

Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the 
inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon 
narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display : the soul 
of a better quality thrusts back the unseasonable economy into 
the vaults of life, and says, I will obey the God, and the sacri¬ 
fice and the fire he will provide. Ibn Hankal, the Arabian 
geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the hospitality of 
Sogd, in Bukharia. “ When I was in Sogd, I saw a great 
building, like a palace, the gates of which 'were open and fixed 
back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was 
told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a 
hundred years. Strangers may present themselves at any 
hour, and in whatever number ; the master has amply pro¬ 
vided for the reception of the men and their animals, and is 
never happier than when they tarry for some time. Nothing 
of the kind have I seen in any other country.” The magnani¬ 
mous know very well that they who give time, or money, or 
shelter, to the stranger, — so it be done for love, and not for 
ostentation, — do, as it w r ere, put God under obligation to 
them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe. In 
some way the time they seem to lose is redeemed, and the 
pains they seem to take remunerate themselves. These men 
fan the flame of human love, and raise the standard of civil 
virtue among mankind. But hospitality must be for sendee, 
and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul 
rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table 
and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its 
own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water 
than belong to city feasts. 

The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to 
do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for 
its elegancy, not for its austerity. It seems not worth his 
while to be solemn, and denounce with bitterness flesh-eating 


350 


HEROISM. 


or wine-drinking, the nse of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, 
or gold. A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he 
dresses ; but without railing or precision, his living is natural 
and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank water, and 
said of wine, “It is a noble, generous liquor, and we should 
be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was made 
before it.” Better still is the temperance of King David, who 
poured out on the ground unto the Lord the water which 
three of his warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of 
their lives. 

It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword, after 
the battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides, “ 0 
virtue ! I have followed thee through life, and I find thee at 
last but a shade.” I doubt not the hero is slandered by this 
report. The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its noble¬ 
ness. It does not ask to dine nicely, and to sleep warm. The 
essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. 
Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can 
very well abide its loss. 

But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic class, is 
the good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to 
which common duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare 
with solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion, success, and 
life, at so cheap a rate, that they will not soothe their enemies 
by petitions, or the show of sorrow, but wear their own habit¬ 
ual greatness. Scipio, charged -with peculation, refuses to do 
himself so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, though 
he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to 
pieces before the tribunes. Socrates’s condemnation of himself 
to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during his 
life, and Sir Thomas More’s playfulness at the scaffold, are of 
the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “ Sea Voyage,” 
Juletta tells the stout captain and his company, — 

“ Jnl. Why, slaves, ’t is in our power to hang ye. 

Master. Very likely, 

’T is in our powers, then, to be hanged/and scorn ye.” . 

These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and 
glow of a perfect health. The great w T ill not condescend to 
take anything seriously ; all must be as gay as the song of a 
canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradica¬ 
tion of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cum¬ 
bered the earth long thousands of years. Simple hearts put 
all the history and customs of this world behind them, and 


HEROISM. 


351 


play their own game in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of 
the world; and such would appear, could we see the human 
race assembled in vision, like little children frolicking together; 
though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a stately 
and solemn garb of works and influences. 

The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a 
romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his 
bench at school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to 
our purpose. All these great and transcendent properties are 
ours. If we dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the Roman 
pride, it is that we are already domesticating the same senti¬ 
ment. Let us find room for this great guest in our small 
houses. The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us 
of our superstitious associations with places and times, with 
^number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Ro¬ 
man, Asia, and England, so tingle in the earl Where the 
heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in 
any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, 
and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves 
names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; 
and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that here 
is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here ; — and art and 
nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, 
shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. 
Epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to 
need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies 
very well where he is. The Jerseys were honest ground 
enough for Washington to tread, and London streets for the 
feet of Milton. A great man makes his climate genial in the 
imagination of men, and its air the beloved element of all del¬ 
icate spirits. That country is the fairest, which is inhabited 
by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the imagination 
in reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bay- 
ard, Sidney, Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life 
is, that we, by the depth of our living, should deck it with 
more than regal or national splendor, and act on principles 
that should interest man and nature in the length of our days. 

We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, 
who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life was 
not extraordinary. When we see their air and mien, when we 
hear them speak of society, of books, of religion, we admire 
their superiority, they seem to throw contempt on our entire 
polity and social state ; theirs is the tone of a youthful giant, 


352 


HEROISM. 


who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an active 
profession, and the forming Colossus shrinks to the common 
size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tenden¬ 
cies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough 
world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of 
the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no example and 
no companion, and their heart fainted. What then 1 . The 
lesson they gave in their first aspirations is yet true; and a 
better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their 
belief. Or why should a woman liken herself to any historical 
woman, and think, because Sappho, or Sevigne, or De Stael, or 
the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do 
not satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis, none can, 
— certainly not she. Why not 1 She has a new and unat¬ 
tempted problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest 
nature that ever bloomed. Let the maiden with erect soul, 
walk serenely on her way, accept the hint of each new ex¬ 
perience, search in turn all the objects that solicit her eye, 
that she may learn the power and the charm of her new-born 
being, which is the kindling of a new dawn in the recesses of 
space. The fair girl, who repels interference by a decided and 
proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful 
and lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own 
nobleness. The silent heart encourages her; 0 friend, never 
strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with 
God the seas. Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is 
cheered and refined by the vision. 

The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men 
have wandering impulses, fits, and starts of generosity. But 
wdien you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not 
weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic 
cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. Yet we 
have the weakness to expect the sympathy of people in those 
actions whose excellence is that they outrun S3 7 mpathy, and 
appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve your brother, 
because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your 
words when you find that prudent people do not commend 
you. Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if 
you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken 
the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that 
I once heard given to a young person, — “ Always do what 
you are afraid to do.” A simple, manly character need never 
make an apology, but should regard its past action with the 


HEROISM. 


353 


calmness of Phocion, when he admitted that the event of the 
battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from the 
battle. 

There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find 
consolation in the thought, — this is a part of my constitution, 
part of my relation and office to my fellow-creature. Has 
nature covenanted with me that I should never appear to dis¬ 
advantage, never make a ridiculous figure 'l Let us be gener¬ 
ous of our dignity, as well as of our money. Greatness once 
and forever has done with opinion. We tell our charities, 
not because we wish to be praised for them, not because we 
think they have great merit, but for our justification. It is a 
capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites 
his charities. 

To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with 
some rigor of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, 
seems to be an asceticism which common good-nature would 
appoint to those who are at ease and in plenty, in sign that 
they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude of suffering 
men. And not only need we breathe and exercise the soul by 
assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of 
unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man to look with a 
bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade 
men, and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms of dis¬ 
ease, with sounds of execration, and the vision of violent 
death. 

Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day 
never shines in which this element may not work. The cir¬ 
cumstances of man, we say, are historically somewhat better 
in this country, and at this hour, than perhaps ever before. 
More freedom exists for culture. It will not now run against 
an axe at the first step out of the beaten track of opinion. 
But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge. 
Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the 
trial of persecution always proceeds. It is but the other day 
that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a 
mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when 
it was better not to live. 

I see not any road of perfect peace wffiich a man can w r alk, 
but after the counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too 
much association, let him go home much, and stahlish himself 
in those courses he approves. The unremitting retention of 
simple and high sentiments in obscure duties is hardening the 


354 


HEROISM. 


character to that temper which will work with honor, if need 
be, in the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages 
have happened to men may befall a man again; and very 
easily in a republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of 
religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers, and the gib¬ 
bet, the youth may freely bring home to his mind, and with 
what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire how fast he can 
fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may 
please the next newspaper and a sufficient number of his 
neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary. 

It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most sus¬ 
ceptible heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the 
utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly approach a brink 
over which no enemy can follow us. 

“ Let them rave: 

Thou art quiet in thy grave.” 

In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour 
when we are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy those 
who have seen safely to an end their manful endeavor % Who 
that sees the meanness of our politics, but inly congratulates 
Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud, 
and forever safe; that he was laid sweet in his grave, the 
hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him'? Who does 
not sometimes envy the good and brave, who are no more to 
suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with 
curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation 
with finite nature 1 And yet the love that will be annihilated 
sooner than treacherous has already made death impossible, 
and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps of ab¬ 
solute and inextinguishable being. 


THE OVER-SOUL, 

—«— 


“ But souls that of his own good life partake, 

He loves as his own self; dear as his eye 
They are to Him: He ’ll never them forsake: 
When they shall die, then God himself shall die: 
They livej they live in blest eternity.” 

Henry More. 

Space is ample, east and west, 

But two cannot go abreast, 

Cannot travel in it two: 

Yonder masterful cuckoo 
Crowds every egg out of the nest, 

Quick or dead, except its own; 

A spell is laid on sod and stone, 

Night and Day were tampered with, 
Every quality and pith 
Surcharged and sultry with a power 
That works its will on age and hour. 





THE OVER-SOUL. 


T HERE is a difference between one and another hour o^ 
life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith 
comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth 
in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more 
reality to them than to all other experiences. For this reason, 
the argument which is always forthcoming to silence those who 
conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely, the appeal to 
experience, is forever invalid and vain. We give up the past 
to the objector, and yet w r e hope. He must explain this hope. 
We grant that human life is mean; but how did we find out 
that it was mean ? What is the ground of this uneasiness of 
ours; of this old discontent 1 What is the universal sense 
of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the soul 
makes its enormous claim 1 Why do men feel that the natural 
history of man has never been written, but he is always leav¬ 
ing behind w T hat you have said of him, and it becomes old, 
and books of metaphysics worthless 1 The philosophy of six 
thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines 
of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, 
in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is 
a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending in¬ 
to us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator 
has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk 
the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to 
acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call 
mine. 

As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that 
flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a sea¬ 
son its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a 
cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that 
I desire and look up, and put myself in the attitude of re¬ 
ception, but from some alien energy the visions come. 



358 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the pres¬ 
ent, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great 
nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms 
of the atmosphere ; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which 
every man’s particular being is contained and made one with 
all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversa¬ 
tion is the worship, to which all right action is submission; 
that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and 
talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and 
to speak from his character, and not from his tongue, and 
1 ’hich evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and 
become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty. We live 
in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime 
within man is the soul of the whole ; the wise silence; the 
universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally 
related; the eternal One. And this deep power in which we 
exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only 
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing 
and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and 
the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the 
sun, the moon, the animal, the tree ; but the whole, of "which 
these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision 
of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and 
by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the 
spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know 
what it saith. Every man’s words, w T ho speaks from that life, 
must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought 
on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do 
not carry its august sense ; they fall short and cold. Only 
itself can inspire whom it will, and behold ! their speech shall 
be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the. rising of the wind. 
Yet I desire, even by profane "words, if I may not use sacred, 
to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what hints 
f have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of 
the Highest Law. 

If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in 
remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of 
dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade, — the 
droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element, 
and forcing it on our distinct notice, —- we shall catch many 
hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret 
of nature. All goes to show that" the soul in man is not an or¬ 
gan, but animates and exercises all the organs ; is not a function 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


359 


like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but 
uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is 
not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and 
the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie, — 
an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From 
within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, 
and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. 
A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all 
good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, 
planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent 
himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, 
but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through 
his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes 
through his intellect, it is genius ; when it breathes through his 
will, it is virtue ; when it flows through his affection, it is love. 
And the blindness of the intellect begins, when it would be 
something of itself. The weakness of the will begins, when 
the individual would be something of himself. All reform 
aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through 
us ; in other words, to engage us to obey. 

Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. 
Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtile. It 
is undefinable, unmeasurable, but we know that it pervades 
and contains us. We know that all spiritual being is in man. 
A wise old proverb says, “ God comes to see us without bell ” ; 
that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and 
the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul 
where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The 
walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of 
spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and 
know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got 
above, but they tower over us, and.most in the moment when 
our interests tempt us to wound them. 

The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made 
known by its independency of those limitations which circum¬ 
scribe us on every hand. The soul circumscribes all things. As 
I have said, it contradicts all experience. In like manner it abol¬ 
ishes time and space. The influence of the senses has, in most 
men, overpowered the mind to that degree, that the walls of 
time and space have come to look real and insurmountable; and 
to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of 
insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the 
force of the soul. The spirit sports with time, — 


360 


THE OYER-SOUL. 


“ Can crowd eternity into an hour, 

Or stretch an hour to eternity.” 

We are often made to feel that there is another youth and 
age than that which is measured from the year of our natural 
birth. Some thoughts always find us young and keep us so. 
Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. 
Every man parts from that contemplation with the feeling that 
it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. The least activity 
of the intellectual powers redeems us in a degree from the 
conditions of time. In sickness, in languor, give us a strain of 
poetry, or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed; or pro¬ 
duce a volume of Plato, or Shakespeare, or remind us of their 
names, and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. See 
how the deep, divine thought reduces centuries, and millenni¬ 
ums, and makes itself present through all ages. Is the teach¬ 
ing of Christ less effective now than it was when first his mouth 
was opened 1 The emphasis of facts and person in my thought 
has nothing to do with time. And so, always, the soul’s scale 
is one; the scale of the senses and the understanding is another. 
Before the revelations of the soul, Time, Space, and Nature 
shrink away. In common speech, we refer all things to time, 
as we habitually refer the immensely sundered stars to one 
concave sphere. And so we say that the Judgment is distant 
or near, that the Millennium approaches, that a day of certain 
political, moral, social reforms is at hand, and the like, when 
we mean, that, in the nature of things, one of the facts we 
contemplate is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent 
and connate with the soul. The things we now r esteem fixed 
shall, one by one, detach themselves, like ripe fruit, from our 
experience and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows 
whither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, London, are facts 
as fugitive as any institution past, or any whiff of mist or 
smoke, and so is society, and so is the world. The soullooketh 
steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds 
behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor spe¬ 
cialties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of 
events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed. 

After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its 
progress to be computed. The soul’s advances are not made 
by gradation, such as can be represented by motion in a 
straight line ; but rather by ascension of state, such as can be 
represented by metamorphosis, — from the egg to the worm, 
from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius are of a 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


361 


certain total character, that does not advance the elect indi¬ 
vidual first over John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to 
each the pain of discovered inferiority, but by every throe 
of growth the man expands there where he works, passing, 
at each pulsation, classes, populations, of men. With each 
divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible 
and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and ex¬ 
pires its air. It converses with truths that have always been 
spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sym¬ 
pathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house. 

This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple 
rise as by specific levity, not into a particular virtue, but into 
the region of all the virtues. They are in the spirit which 
contains them all. The soul requires purity, but purity is 
not it; requires justice, but justice is not that; requires 
beneficence, but is somewhat better; so that there is a kind 
of descent and accommodation felt when we leave speaking of 
moral nature, to urge a virtue which it enjoins. To the well¬ 
born child, all the virtues are natural, and not painfully 
acquired. Speak to his heart, and the man becomes suddenly 
virtuous. 

Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual 
growth, which obeys the same law. Those who are capable of 
humility, of justice, of love, of aspiration, stand already on a 
platform that commands the sciences and arts, speech and 
poetry, action and grace. For whoso dwells in this moral 
beatitude already anticipates those special powers which men 
prize so highly. The lover has no talent, no skill, which 
passes for quite nothing with his enamored maiden, however 
little she may possess of related faculty ; and the heart which 
abandons itself to the Supreme Mind finds itself related to all 
its works, and will travel a royal road to particular knowledges 
and powers* In ascending to this primary and aboriginal 
sentiment, we have come from our remote station on the cir¬ 
cumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, 
as in the closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the uni¬ 
verse, which is but a slow effect. 

One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the 
spirit in a form, — in forms, like my own. I live in society; 
with persons who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or 
express a certain obedience to the great instincts to which I 
live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of a common 
nature ; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me 

VOL. i 16 


362 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we 
call passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence 
comes conversation, competition, persuasion, cities, and war. 
Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the 
soul. In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and 
youth see all the world in them. But the larger experience of 
man discovers the identical nature appearing through them 
all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. In 
all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, 
as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or 
common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God. And 
so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially on high 
questions, the company become aware that the thought rises 
to an equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual prop¬ 
erty in what was said, as well as the sayer. They all become 
wiser than they were. It arches over them like a temple, this 
unity of thought, in which every heart beats with nobler sense 
of power and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemni¬ 
ty. All are conscious of attaining to a higher self-possession. 
There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the 
greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary educa¬ 
tion often labors to silence and obstruct. The mind is one, and 
the best minds, who love truth for its own sake, think much 
less of property in truth. They accept it thankfully every¬ 
where, and do not label or stamp it with any man’s name, for 
it is theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. The learned 
and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. 
Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to 
think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people 
who are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing 
without effort, which we want and have long been hunting in 
vain. The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt 
and left unsaid, than in that which is said in any conversa¬ 
tion. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously 
seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We 
do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time 
that we are much more. I feel the same truth how often in 
my trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat 
higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to 
Jove from behind each of us. 

Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean service 
to the world, for which they forsake their native nobleness, 
they resemble those Arabian sheiks, who dwell in mean houses, 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


3G3 


and affect an external poverty, to escape the rapacity of the 
Pacha, and reserve all their display of wealth for their interior 
and guarded retirements. 

As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of 
life. It is adult already in the infant man. In my dealing 
with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my 
money, stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. 
If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and 
leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my 
superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act 
for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of 
his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with 
me. 

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know 
truth when we see it, let sceptic and scoffer say what they 
choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what 
they do not wish to hear, ‘ How do you know it is truth, and 
not an error of your own V We know truth when we see it, 
from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are 
awake. It was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, 
which would alone indicate the greatness of that man’s per¬ 
ception, — “ It is no proof of a man’s understanding to be able 
to confirm whatever he pleases ; but to be able to discern that 
what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the 
mark and character of intelligence.” In the book I read, the 
good thought returns to me, as every truth will, the image of 
the whole soul. To the bad thought which I find in it, the 
same soul becomes a discerning, separating sword, and lops it 
away. We are wiser than we know. If we will not interfere 
with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing 
stands in God, we know the particular thing, and everything, 
and every man. For the Maker of all things and all persons 
stands behind us, and casts his dread omniscience through us 
over things. 

But beyond this recognition of its own in particular pas¬ 
sages of the individual’s experience, it also reveals truth. And 
here we should seek to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, 
and to speak with a worthier, loftier strain of that advent. 
For the soul’s communication of truth is the highest event in 
nature, since it then does not give somewhat from itself, but 
it gives itself, or passes into and becomes that man whom it 
enlightens ; or, in proportion to that truth he receives, it takes 
him to itself. 


364 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifes¬ 
tations of its own nature, by the term Revelation . These are 
always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this 
communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. 
It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges 
of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of this central 
commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A thrill 
passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at 
the performance of a great action, which comes out of the 
heart of nature. In these communications, the power to see 
is not separated from the will to do, but the insight proceeds 
from obedience, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful per* 
ception. Every moment when the individual feels himself 
invaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of our consti¬ 
tution, a certain enthusiasm attends the individual’s conscious¬ 
ness of that Divine presence. The character and duration of 
this enthusiasm varies with the state of the individual, from 
an ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspiration, — which.is its 
rarer appearance, — to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, 
in which form it warms, like our household fires, all the fami¬ 
lies and associations of men, and makes society possible. A 
certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening 
of the religious sense in men, as if they had been “ blasted 
with excess of light.” The trances of Socrates, the “ union ” 
of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, 
the aurora of Behmen, the convulsions of George Fox and his 
Quakers, the illumination of Swedenborg, are of this kind. 
What was in the case of these remarkable persons a ravish¬ 
ment has, in innumerable instances in common life, been ex¬ 
hibited in less striking manner. Everywhere the history of 
religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of 
the Moravian and Quietist; the opening of the internal sense 
of the Word, in the language of the New Jerusalem Church; 
the revival of the Calvinistic churches ; the «.experiences of the 
Methodists, are varying forms of that shudder of awe and de¬ 
light with which the individual soul always mingles with the 
universal soul. 

The nature of these revelations is the same ; they are per¬ 
ceptions of the absolute law. They are solutions of the soul’s 
own questions. They do not answer the questions which the 
understanding asks. The soul answers never by words, but 
by the thing itself that is inquired after. 

Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


365 


of a revelation is, that it is a telling of fortunes. In past 
oracles of the soul, the understanding seeks to find answers to 
sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how long 
men shall exist, what their hands shall do, and who shall be 
their company, adding names, and dates, and places. But we 
must pick no locks. We must check this low curiosity. An 
answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the 
questions you ask. Do not require a description of the coun¬ 
tries towards which you sail. The description does not de¬ 
scribe them to you, and to-morrow you arrive there, and know 
them by inhabiting them. Men ask concerning the immor¬ 
tality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of 
the sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has left 
replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did 
that sublime spirit speak in their patois. To truth, justice, 
love, the attributes of the soul, the idea of immutableness 
is essentially associated. Jesus, living in these moral senti¬ 
ments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the mani¬ 
festations of these, never made the separation of the idea of 
duration from the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a 
syllable concerning the duration of the soul. It was left to 
his disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to 
teach the immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain 
it by evidences. The moment the doctrine of the immortality 
is separately taught, man is already fallen. In the flowing of 
love, in the adoration of humility, there is no question of con¬ 
tinuance. No inspired man ever asks this question, or con¬ 
descends to these evidences. For the soul is true to itself, and 
the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the 
present, which is infinite, to a future wdiich would be finite. 

These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a 
confession of sin. God has no answer for them. No answer 
in words can reply to a question of things. It is not in an 
arbitrary “ decree of God,” but in the nature of man, that a 
veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the soul will 
not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. 
By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of 
men to live in to-day. The only mode of obtaining an answer 
to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, 
and, accepting the tide of being which floats us into the secret 
of nature, work and live, work and live, and all unawares the 
advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, 
and the question and the answer are one. 


366 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns 
until it shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of 
an ocean of light, we see and know each other, and what spirit 
each is of. Who can tell the grounds of his knowledge of 
the character of the several individuals in his circle of friends 1 
No man. Yet their acts and words do not disappoint him. In 
that man, though he knew no ill of him, he put no trust. In 
that other, though they had seldom met, authentic signs had 
yet passed, to signify that he might be trusted as one who had 
an interest in his own character. We know each other very 
well, — which of us has been just to himself, and whether 
that which we teach or behold is only an aspiration, or is our 
honest effort also. 

We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies aloft in 
our life or unconscious power. The intercourse of society, — 
its trade, its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, — is one 
wide, judicial investigation of character. In full court, or in 
small committee, or confronted face to face, accuser and ac¬ 
cused, men offer themselves to be judged. Against their will 
they exhibit those decisive trifles by which character is read. 
But who judges 1 and what ] Not our understanding. We 
do not read them by learning or craft. No; the wisdom of 
the wise man consists herein, that he does not judge them ; he 
lets them judge themselves, and merely reads and records their 
own verdict. 

By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpow-. 
ered, and, maugre our efforts or our imperfections, your genius 
will speak from you, and mine from me. That which we are, 
we shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts 
come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and 
thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never 
voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head. The 
infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man 
takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor 
books, nor actions, nor talents, nor all together, can hinder him 
from being deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he 
have not found his home in God, his manners, his forms of 
speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, shall I say, of all 
his opinions, will involuntarily confess it, let him brave it out 
how he will. If he have found his centre, the Deity will shine 
through him, through all the disguises of ignorance, of un- 
genial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. The tone 
of seeking is one, and the tone of having is another. 


THE OVER-SOUL 


367 


The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary, — 
between poets like Herbert, and poets like Pope, — between 
philosophers like Spinoza, Kant, and Coleridge, and philoso¬ 
phers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh, and Stewart, — between 
men of the world, who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and 
here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying, half insane under 
the infinitude of his thought, — is, that one class speak from, 
ivithin, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the 
fact; and the other class, from without , as spectators merely, 
or perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third 
persons. It is of no use to preach to me from without. I can 
do that too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within, 
and in a degree that transcends all others. In that is the 
miracle. I believe beforehand that it ought so to be. All 
men stand continually in the expectation of the appearance of 
such a teacher. But if a man do not speak from within the 
veil, where the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly 
confess it. 

The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes 
what we call genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is not 
wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt 
superior to literary fame, and are not writers. Among the 
multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing pres¬ 
ence ; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of in¬ 
spiration ; they have a light, and know not whence it comes, 
and call it their own ; their talent is some exaggerated facultjq 
some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease. 
In these instances the intellectual gifts do not make the im¬ 
pression of virtue, but almost of vice ; and we feel that a 
man’s talents stand in the way of his advancement in truth. 
But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common 
heart. It is not anomalous, but more like, and not less like 
other men. There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity 
which is superior to any talents they exercise. The author, 
the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take place 
of the man. Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spen¬ 
ser, in Shakespeare, in Milton. They are content with truth. 
They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and phlegmatic 
to those who have been spiced with the frantic passion and vio¬ 
lent coloring of inferior, but popular writers. For they are 
poets by the free course which they allow to the informing 
soul, which through their eyes beholds again, and blesses the 
things which it hath made. The soul is superior to its knowl- 


368 


THE OVER-SOUL 


edge ; wiser than any of its works. The great poet makes us 
feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. 
His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise 
all he has done. Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain 
of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his 
own ; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has 
created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self- 
existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the 
shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration 
which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as 
good from day to day, forever. Why, then, should I make ac¬ 
count of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not the soul from which 
they fell as syllables from the tongue 1 

This energy does not descend into individual life on any other 
condition than entire possession. It comes to the lowly and 
simple ; it comes to whomsoever will put off what is foreign 
and proud; it comes as insight! it comes as serenity and grand¬ 
eur. When we see those whom it inhabits, we are apprised 
of new degrees of greatness. From that inspiration the man 
comes back with a changed tone. He does not talk with men 
with an eye to their opinion. He tries them. It requires of 
us to be plain and true. The vain traveller attempts to em¬ 
bellish his life by quoting my lord, and the prince, and the 
countess, who thus said or did to him. The ambitious vulgar 
show you their spoons, and brooches, and rings, and preserve 
their cards and compliments. The more cultivated, in their 
account of their own experience, cull out the pleasing, poetic 
circumstance, — the visit to Rome, the man of genius they 
saw, the brilliant friend they know ; still further on, perhaps, 
the gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain 
thoughts, they enjoyed yesterday, — and so seek to throw a 
romantic color over their life. But the soul that ascends to 
worship the great God is plain and true ; has no rose-color, no 
fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures ; does not want admira¬ 
tion ; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest experience 
of the common day, — by reason of the present moment and 
the mere trifle having become porous to thought, and bibulous 
of the sea of light. 

Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature 
looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest 
to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, 
that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few 
pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


369 


the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours. Nothing 
can pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the casting 
aside your trappings, and dealing man to man in naked truth, 
plain confession, and omniscient affirmation. 

Souls such as these treat you as gods would ; walk as gods in 
the earth, accepting without any admiration your wit, your 
bounty, your virtue even, — say rather your act of duty, for 
your virtue they own as their proper blood, royal as them¬ 
selves, and over-royal, and the father of the gods. But what 
rebuke their plain fraternal bearing casts on the mutual flattery 
with which authors solace each other and wound themselves! 
These flatter not. I do not wonder that these men go to see 
Cromwell, and Christina, and Charles the Second, and James 
the First, and the Grand Turk. For they are, in their own 
elevation, the fellows of kings, and must feel the servile tone 
of conversation in the world. They must always be a godsend 
to princes, for they confront them, a king to a king, without 
ducking or concession, and give a high nature the refreshment 
and satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity, of even com¬ 
panionship, and of new ideas. They leave them wiser and 
superior men. Souls like these make us feel that sincerity is 
more excellent than flattery. Deal so plainly with man and 
woman, as to constrain the utmost sincerity, and destroy all 
hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compliment you 
can pay. Their “ highest praising,” said Milton, “ is not flat¬ 
tery, and their plainest advice is a kind of praising.” 

Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the 
soul. The simplest person, who in his integrity worships God, 
becomes God : yet for ever and ever the influx of this better 
and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe 
and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises 
the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars 
of our mistakes and disappointments ! When we have broken 
our god of tradition, and ceased from our God of rhetoric, then 
may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling 
of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart 
with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It in¬ 
spires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, 
but the sight, that the best is the true, and may in that 
thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, 
and adjourn to the sure revelation of time, the solution of his 
private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the 
heart of being. In the presence of law to his mind, he is 
16* x 


370 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


overflowed with a reliance so universal, that it sweeps away 
all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal con¬ 
dition in its flood. He believes that he cannot escape from 
his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to 
thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet 
run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will 
you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him 1 
for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and 
could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the 
best. You are preparing with eagerness to go and render a 
service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the 
love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to 
you, that you have no right to go, unless you are equally will¬ 
ing to be prevented from going 1 0, believe, as thou livest, 

that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which 
thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear ! Every prov¬ 
erb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or 
comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding pas¬ 
sages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but the 
great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his 
embrace. And this, because the heart in thee is the heart of 
all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there any¬ 
where in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless 
circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all 
one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. 

Let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature and all 
thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells 
with him; that the Sources of nature are in his own mind, if 
the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know what 
the great God speaketh, he must ‘ go into his closet and shut 
the door,’ as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest 
to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing 
himself from all the accents of other men’s devotion. Even 
their prayers are hurtful to him, until he have made his own. 
Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. When¬ 
ever the appeal is made — no matter how indirectly — to num¬ 
bers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is 
not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping thought to him 
never counts his company. When I sit in that presence, who 
shall dare to come in 1 When I rest in perfect humility, when 
1 burn with pure love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg say 1 

It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or 
to one. The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The 
reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the 


THE OVER-SOUL. 


371 


withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, 
now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. 
It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts. 
Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follow¬ 
er ; it never appeals from itself. It believes in itself. Before 
the immense possibilities of man, all mere experience, all past 
biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. Be¬ 
fore that heaven which our presentiments foreshow us, we can¬ 
not easily praise any form of life we have seen or read of. 
We not only affirm that we have few great men, but, absolute¬ 
ly speaking, that we have none ; that we have no history, no 
record of any character or mode of living, that entirely con¬ 
tents us. The saints and demigods whom history worships 
we are constrained to accept with a grain of allowance. 
Though in our lonely hours we draw a new strength out of 
their memory, yet, pressed on our attention, as they are by 
the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade. The 
soul gives itself, alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Origi¬ 
nal, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, 
and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young, and nimble. 
It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called 
religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and 
feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior 
to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born 
into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my 
own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and 
thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to 
be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More 
and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I 
become public and human in my regards and actions. So 
come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are 
immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the an¬ 
cient said, that “ its beauty is immense,” man will come to 
see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul 
worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders ; he will 
learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sa¬ 
cred ; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a mo¬ 
ment of time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds 
and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will 
cease from what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content 
with all places and with any service he can render. He will 
calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which 
carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in 
the bottom of the heart. 



C IRCLES. 

- «— 


Nature centres into balls, 

And her proud ephemerals, 
Fast to surface and outside, 
Scan the profile of the sphere; 
Knew they what that signified, 
A new genesis were here. 




CIRCLES. 


T HE eye is the first circle ; the horizon which it forms is 
the second ; and throughout nature this primary figure 
is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the 
cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of 
God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circum¬ 
ference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious 
sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already de¬ 
duced, in considering the circular or compensatory character 
of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace ; 
that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an 
apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another 
can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end 
is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on 
mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. 

This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Un¬ 
attainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man 
can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of 
every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many 
illustrations of human power in every department. 

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and 
volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe 
seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The 
law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the 
predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of 
cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea: they 
will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if 
it had been statues of ice ; here and there a solitary figure or 
fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left 
in cold dells and mountain clefts, in June and July. For the 
genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek 
letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the 



376 


CIRCLES. 


same sentence, and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the 
creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new 
continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the 
new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New 
arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aque¬ 
ducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gun¬ 
powder ; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; 
steam by electricity. 

You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of 
so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, 
and that which builds is better than that which is built. The 
hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better than 
the hand, and nimbler, was the invisible thought which wrought 
through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine 
cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer 
cause. Everything looks permanent until its secret is known. 
A rich estate appears to woman a firm and lasting fact; to a 
merchant, one easily created out of any materials, and easily 
lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, 
like a gold-mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, 
not much more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature looks 
provokingly stable and secular, but it^has a cause like all the 
rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these fields 
stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually 
considerable 1 Permanence is a word of degrees. Every¬ 
thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power 
than bat-balls. 

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying 
though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the 
idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be 
reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. 
The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring 
imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and 
larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which 
this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, de¬ 
pends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is 
the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a 
circular wave of circumstance, — as, for instance, an empire, 
rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to heap itself 
on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. But if the 
soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all 
sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also 
runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to 


CIRCLES. 


377 


bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and 
narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, 
and to immense and innumerable expansions. 

Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every 
general law only a particular fact of some more general law 
presently to disclose itself. There is no outside, no enclosing 
wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story, — 
how good ! how final! how it puts a new face on all things ! 
He fills the sky. Lo ! on the other side rises also a man, and 
draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the 
outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not 
man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith 
to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by 
themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and 
cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and 
the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be in¬ 
cluded as one example of a bolder generalization. In the 
thought of to-morrow there is a power to upheave all thy 
creed, all the creeds, all the literatures, of the nations, and 
marshal thee to a Heaven which no epic dream has yet de¬ 
picted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world, 
as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as 
prophecies of the next age. 

Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are 
actions; the new prospect is power. Every several result is 
threatened and judged by that which follows. Every one 
seems to be contradicted by the new; it is only limited by 
the new. The new statement is always hated by the old, and, 
to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of scepticism. 
But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are ef¬ 
fects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and 
presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the 
revelation of the new hour. 

Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass 
and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit 1 ? 
Resist it not; it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter 
just as much. 

There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. 
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood ; and 
if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine 
soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, 
the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is al¬ 
ways a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man 
believes that he has a greater possibility. 


378 


CIRCLES. 


Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full 
of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason 
why I should not have the same thought, the same power of 
expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems 
the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a 
dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; 
and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was 
that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm 
faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I 
am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall. 

The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work 
a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man’s rela¬ 
tions. We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the ap¬ 
prover. The sweet of nature is love ; yet, if I have a friend, 
I am tormented by my imperfections. The love of me accuses 
the other party. If he were high enough to slight me, then 
could I love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. A 
man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. 
For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. 
I thought as I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, 
why should I play with them this game of idolatry ? I know 
and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits 
of persons called high and worthy. Rich, noble, and great 
they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. 0 
blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they art not thou! 
Every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly 
state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent 
pleasure. 

How often must we learn this lesson 1 Men cease to inter¬ 
est us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limita¬ 
tion. As soon as you once come up with a man’s limitations, 
it is all over with him. Has he talents 1 has he enterprise 1 
has he knowledge 1 it boots not. Infinitely alluring and at¬ 
tractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim 
in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and 
you care not if you never see it again. 

Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seem¬ 
ingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle 
and Plato arc reckoned the respective heads of two schools. 
A wise man will see that Aristotle Platonizes. By going one 
step farther back in thought, discordant opinions are recon¬ 
ciled, by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and 
we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision. 


CIRCLES. 


379 


Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this 
planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a con¬ 
flagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows 
■what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of 
science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not 
any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of 
fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very 
hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, 
the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of 
a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx 
of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends 
it. 

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man 
cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but 
put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his 
preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his 
alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid 
conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Chris¬ 
tianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and decease. 

There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with 
it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see 
in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it 
is true in gleams and fragments. Then, its countenance waxes 
stern and grand, and w T e see that it must be true. It now shows 
itself ethical and practical. We learn that God is ; that he is 
in me ; and that all things are shadows of him. The idealism 
of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, 
and that again is a crude statement of the fact, that all nature 
is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. 
Much more obviously is history and the state of the world at 
any one time directly dependent on the intellectual classification 
then existing in the minds of men. The things which are dear 
to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have 
emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present 
order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of 
culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of 
human pursuits. 

Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck 
up the termini which bound the common of silence on every 
side. The parties are not to be judged by the spirit they par¬ 
take and even express under this Pentecost. To-morrow they 
will have receded from this high-water-mark. To-morrow you 
shall find them stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet let 


380 


CIRCLES. 


us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls. When 
each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the 
oppression of the last speaker, to oppress us with the greatness 
ancl exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields us to another 
redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men. 0, 
what truths profound and executable only in ages and orbs are 
supposed in the announcement of every truth ! In common 
hours, society sits cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, 
empty, — knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by 
mighty symbols w T hich are not symbols to us, but prose and trivial 
toys. Then cometh the god, and converts the statues into fiery 
men, and by a flash of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded 
all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and 
saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. The facts 
which loomed so large in the fogs of yesterday, — property, 
climate, breeding, personal beauty, and the like, have strangely 
changed their proportions. All that we reckoned settled shakes 
and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions, leave 
their foundations, and dance before our eyes. And yet here 
again see the swift circumspection! Good as is discourse, 
silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse 
indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the 
hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, 
no w'ords would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, 
no words would be suffered. 

Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, through 
which a new one may be described. The use of literature is to 
afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our 
present life, a purchase by w T hich we may move it. We fill 
ourselves with ancient learning, install ourselves the best we 
can in Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, only that we may 
wiselier see French, English, and American houses and modes 
of living. In like manner, we see literature best from the 
midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high 
religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field. 
The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth’s orbit as 
a base to find the parallax of any star. 

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the 
wisdom is not in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphys¬ 
ics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. 
In my daily work I incline to repeat my old steps, and do not 
believe in remedial force, in the power of change and reform. 
But some Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new wine of his 


CIRCLES. 


381 


imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of dar¬ 
ing thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his 
shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open 
my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings to the sides 
of all the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once 
more of choosing a straight path in theory and practice. 

We have the same need to command a view of the religion 
of the world. We can never see Christianity from the cate¬ 
chism:— from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from 
amidst the songs of wood-birds, we possibly may. Cleansed by 
the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful 
forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast a right 
glance back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear to 
the best of mankind ; yet was there never a young philosopher 
whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church, by whom 
that brave text of Paul’s was not specially prized : “ Then shall 
also the Son be subject unto Him who put all things under 
him, that God may be all in all.” Let the claims and virtues 
of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man 
presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and 
gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this 
generous word out of the book itself. 

The natural world may be conceived of as a system of con¬ 
centric circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight 
dislocations, which apprise us that this surface on which we 
now stand is not fixed, but sliding. These manifold tenacious 
qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these metals and ani¬ 
mals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are means 
and methods only, — are words of God, and as fugitive 
as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his 
craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective 
affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof 
this is only a partial or approximate statement, namely, that 
like draws to like ; and that the goods which belong to you 
gravitate to you, and need not be pursued with pains and 
cost 1 Yet is that statement approximate also, and not final. 
Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle, subter¬ 
ranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their coun¬ 
terpart, but, rightly considered, these things proceed from the 
eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effect are two sides 
of one fact. 

The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call 
the virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better. 


332 


CIRCLES. 


The great man will not be prudent in the popular sense ; all 
his prudence will be so much deduction from his grandeur. 
But it behooves each to see, when he sacrifices prudence, to 
what god he devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, he had better 
be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can well spare his 
mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead. Geof¬ 
frey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet 
may be safer from the bite of snakes ; Aaron never thinks of 
such a peril. In many years neither is harmed by such an 
accident. Yet it seems to me, that, with every precaution you 
take against such an evil, you put yourself into the power of 
the evil. I suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest 
prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from the centre to 
the verge of our orbit 1 Think how many times we shall fall 
back into pitiful calculations before we take up our 1 rest in the 
great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. 
Besides, your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest 
men. The poor and the low have their way of expressing the 
last facts of philosophy as well as you. “ Blessed be nothing,’’ 
and “ the worse things are, the better they are,” are proverbs 
which express the transcendentalism of common life. 

One man’s justice is another’s injustice ; one man’s beauty, 
another’s ugliness ; one man’s wisdom, another’s folly ; as one 
beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks 
justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his 
abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty, and 
makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has 
his own way of looking at things; asks himself, Which debt 
must I pay first, — the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor 1 
the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of 
genius to nature 1 For you, 0 broker ! there is no other prin¬ 
ciple but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; 
love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are 
sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other 
duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment 
of moneys. Let me live onward ; you shall find that, though 
slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these 
debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should 
dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be 
injustice '1 Does he owe no debt but money 1 And are all 
claims on him to be postponed to a landlord’s or a banker’s 1 

There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The vir¬ 
tues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform 


CIRCLES. 


383 


is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what 
we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has con¬ 
sumed our grosser vices. 

“ Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, 

Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.” 

It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish 
our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofit¬ 
ableness day by day; but when these waves of God flow into 
me, I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute 
my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month 
or the year ; for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence 
and omnipotence -which asks nothing of duration, but sees 
that the energy of the mind is commensurate witli the work 
to be done, without time. 

And thus, 0 circular philosopher, I hear some reader ex¬ 
claim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an equivalence 
and indifferency of all actions, and -would fain teach iis that, 
if ive are true , forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of 
which we shall construct the temple of the true God ! 

I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened 
by seeing the predominance of the saccharine principle through¬ 
out vegetable nature, and not less by beholding in morals that 
unrestrained inundation of the principle of good into every 
chink and hole that selfishness has left open, yea, into selfish¬ 
ness and sin itself; so that no evil is pure, nor hell itself 
without its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should mislead 
any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me 
remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not 
set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what 
I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. 
I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred ; none are 
profane ; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past 
at my back. 

Yet this incessant movement and progression which all 
things partake could never become sensible to us but by con¬ 
trast to some principle of fixture or stability in the soul. 
Whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal 
generator abides. That central life is somewhat superior to 
creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and contains all 
its circles. Forever it labors to create a life and thought as 
large and excellent as itself; but in vain; for that which is 
made instructs how to make a better. 

Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all 


384 


CIRCLES. 


things renew, germinate, and spring. Why should we import 
rags and relics into the new hour 1 Nature abhors the old, 
and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this 
one. We call it by many names, — fever, intemperance, in¬ 
sanity, stupidity, and crime; they are all forms of old age ; 
they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia, not new¬ 
ness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no 
need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do 
not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, as¬ 
piring, with religious eye looking upward, counts itself noth¬ 
ing, and abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all 
sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know 
all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, 
accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to the 
young. Let them, then, become organs of the Holy Ghost; 
let them be lovers ; let them behold truth; and their eyes are 
uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again 
with hope and power. This old age ought not to creep on a 
human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is 
always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. 
Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. 
No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against 
a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to¬ 
morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be set¬ 
tled ; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for 
them. 

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the 
mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are 
building up our being. Of lower states, — of acts of routine 
and sense, — we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of 
God, the total growths and universal movements of the soul, 
he hideth ; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is 
divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no 
guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know. The new po¬ 
sition of the advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet 
has them all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies of 
the past, yet is itself an exhalation of the morning. T cast 
away in this new moment all my once hoarded knowledge, as 
vacant and vain. Now, for the first time, seem I to know 
anything rightly. The simplest words, — we do not know 
what they mean, except when we love and aspire. 

The difference between talents and character is adroitness to 
keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to 


CIRCLES. 


385 


make a new road to new and better goals. Character makes 
an overpowering present; a cheerful, determined hour, which 
fortifies all the company, by making them see that much is 
possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character 
dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the 
conqueror, we do not think much of any one battle or success. 
We see that we had exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy 
to him. The great man is not convulsible or tormentable; 
events pass over him without much impression. People say 
sometimes, “ See what I have overcome; see how cheerful I 
am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black 
events.” Not if they still remind me of the black event. True 
conquest is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear, as 
an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and 
advancing. 

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to for¬ 
get ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our 
sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing 
how or why ; in short, to draw a new circle. Nothing great 
was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is 
wonderful; it is by abandonment. The great moments of his¬ 
tory are the facilities of performance through the strength of 
ideas, as the works of genius and religion. “ A man,” said 
Oliver Cromwell, “ never rises so high as when he knows not 
whither he is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of 
opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this 
oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. 
For the like reason, they ask the aid of wild passions, as in 
gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and gen¬ 
erosities of the heart. 


VOL. i. 


17 


T 



NTELLECT. 


4 - 


Go, speed the stars of Thought 
On to their shining goals; — 

The sower scatters broad his seed, 
The wheat thou strew’st be souls. 





INTELLECT. 



VERY substance is negatively electric to that which 


I v stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to that 
which stands below it. Water dissolves wood, and iron, and 
salt; air dissolves water; electric fire dissolves air, but the 
intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the sub¬ 
tlest unnamed relations of nature, in its resistless menstruum. 
Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect constructive. 
Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or construc¬ 
tion. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history 
of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the 
steps and boundaries of that transparent essence 1 The first 
questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is 
gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can we speak 
of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowl¬ 
edge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts 
will into perception, knowledge into act h Each becomes the 
other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like the vision of the 
eye, but is union with the things known. 

Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear consid¬ 
eration of abstract truth. The considerations of time and 
place, of you and me, of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most 
men’s minds. Intellect separates the fact considered from 
you, from all local and personal reference, and discerns it as 
if it existed for its own sake. Heraclitus looked upon the af¬ 
fections as dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and 
evil affections, it is hard for man to walk forward in a straight 
line. Intellect is void of affection, and sees an object as it 
stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intel¬ 
lect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, 
and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine. He who is 
immersed in what concerns person or place cannot see the 



390 


INTELLECT. 


problem of existence. This the intellect always ponders. Na¬ 
ture shows all things formed and bound. The intellect pierces 
the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness between 
remote things, and reduces all things into a few principles. 

The making, a fact the subject of thought raises it. All 
that mass of mental and moral phenomena, which we do not 
make objects of voluntary thought, come within the power of 
fortune ; they constitute the circumstance of daily life ; they 
are subject to change, to fear, and hope. Every man beholds 
his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship 
aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mor¬ 
tal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But a truth, 
separated by the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. 
We behold it as a god upraised above care and fear. And so 
any fact in our life, or any record of our fancies or reflections, 
disentangled from the web of our unconsciousness, becomes an 
object impersonal and immortal. It is the past restored, but 
embalmed. A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear 
and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. It is of¬ 
fered for science. What is addressed to us for contemplation 
does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings. 

The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expan¬ 
sion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the 
means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a pri¬ 
vate door into every individual. Long prior to the age of re¬ 
flection is the thinking of the mind. Out of darkness, it came 
insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. In the period 
of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from the 
surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind 
doth or saith.is after a law ; and this native law remains over 
it after it has come to reflection or conscious thought. In 
the most worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormentor’s life, the 
greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, unimaginable, 
and must be, until he can take himself up by his own ears. 
What am I h What has my will done to make me that I am 1 
Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, this hour, 
this connection of events, by secret currents of might and mind, 
and my ingenuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not 
aided to an appreciable degree. 

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, 
with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any 
question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you, whilst 
you rise from your bed, or walk abroad in the morning after 


INTELLECT. 


391 


meditating the matter before sleep on the previous night. Our 
thing is a pious reception. Our truth of thought is therefore 
vitiated as much by too violent direction given by our will, as 
by too great negligence. We do not determine what we will 
think. We only open our senses, clear away, as we can, all ob¬ 
struction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We 
have little control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners 
of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, 
and so fully engage us that we take no thought for the mor¬ 
row, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our 
own. By and by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where 
we have been, what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as we 
can, what we have beheld. As far as we can recall these ec¬ 
stasies, we carry away in the ineffaceable memory the result, 
and all men and all the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But 
the moment we cease to report, and attempt to correct and 
contrive, it is not Truth. 

If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us, 
we shall perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive 
principle over the arithmetical or logical. The first contains 
the second, but virtual and latent. We want, in every man, a 
long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must 
not be spoken. Logic is the procession or proportionate un¬ 
folding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method; 
the moment it would appear as propositions, and have a sepa¬ 
rate value, it is worthless. 

In every man’s mind, some images, words, and facts remain, 
without effort on his part to imprint them, which others forget, 
and afterwards these illustrate to him important laws. All our 
progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have 
first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant 
has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though 
you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting 
it to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why 
you believe. 

Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires 
after college rules. What you have aggregated in a natural 
manner surprises and delights when it is produced. For we 
cannot oversee each other’s secret. And hence the differences 
between men in natural endowment are insignificant in com¬ 
parison with their common wealth. Do you think the porter 
and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders 
for you? Everybody knows as much as the savant. The 


392 


INTELLECT. 


walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with 
thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read 
the inscriptions. Every man, in the degree in which he has 
wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning the 
modes of living and thinking of other men, and especially of 
those classes whose minds have not been subdued by the drill 
of school education. 

This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but 
becomes richer and more frequent in its informations through 
all states of culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when 
we not only observe, but take pains to observe; when we of 
set purpose sit down to consider an abstract truth; when we 
keep the mind’s eye open, whilst we converse, whilst we read, 
whilst we act, intent to learn the secret law of some class of 
facts. 

What is the hardest task in the world I To think. I would 
put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, 
and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. 
I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God 
face to face and live. For example, a man explores the basis 
of civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, 
without rest, in one direction. His best heed long time avails 
him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all 
but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say, I will 
walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness to me. 
We go forth, but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only 
the stillness and composed attitude of the library to seize the 
thought. But we come in, and are as far from it as at first. 
Then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth appears. A 
certain wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the 
principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes, because we had 
previously laid siege to the shrine. It seems as if the law of 
the intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now 
inspire, now expire the breath ; by which the heart now draws 
in, then hurls out the blood, — the law of undulation. So now 
you must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear 
your activity, and see what the great Soul showeth. 

The immortality of man is as legitimately preached from the 
intellections as from the moral volitions. Every intellection is 
mainly prospective. Its present value is its least. Inspect 
what delights you in Plutarch, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes. 
Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns 
full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and 


INTELLECT. 


393 


behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret 
becomes precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography 
becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, 
and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men 
say, Where did he get this 1 and think there was something 
divine in his life. But no; they have myriads of facts just as 
good, would they only get a lamp to ransack their attics withal. 

We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in 
wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person 
who always deferred to me, who, seeing my whim for writing, 
fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I 
saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to 
me, and I would make the same use of them. He held the 
old ; he holds the new ; I had the habit of tacking together 
the old and the new, which he did not use to exercise. This 
may hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we should meet 
Shakespeare, we should not be conscious of any steep inferiority; 
no : but of a great equality, — only that he possessed a strange 
skill of using, of classifying, his facts, which we lacked. For, 
notwithstanding our utter incapacity to produce anything like 
Hamlet and Othello, see the perfect reception this wit, and im¬ 
mense knowledge of life, and liquid eloquence find in us all. 

If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe 
corn, and then retire within doors, and shut your eyes, and 
press them with your hand, you shall still see apples hanging 
in the bright light, with boughs and leaves thereto, or the 
tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, and this for five or six hours 
afterwards. There lie the impressions on the retentive organ 
though you knew it not. So lies the whole series of nat¬ 
ural images with which your life has made you acquainted 
in your memory, though you know it not, and a thrill of pas¬ 
sion flashes light on their dark chamber, and the active power 
seizes instantly the fit image, as the word of its momentary 
thought. 

It is long ere vre discover how rich we are. Our history, 
we are sure, is quite tame : we have nothing to write, nothing 
to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised 
recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up 
some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, 
we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish per¬ 
son we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature 
paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History. 

In the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by 
17 * _- 


394 


INTELLECT. 


the word Genius, we observe the same balance of two elements 
as in intellect receptive. The constructive intellect produces 
thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the 
generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature. 
To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publi¬ 
cation. The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no fre¬ 
quency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize, 
but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. 
It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought 
now, for the first time, bursting into the universe, a child 
of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable 
greatness. It seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet 
existed, and to dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought 
of man, and goes to fashion every institution. But to make it 
available, it needs a vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to 
men. To be communicable, it must become picture or sensi¬ 
ble object. We must learn the language of facts. The most 
wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand 
to paint them to the senses. The ray of light passes invisible 
through space, and only when it falls on an object is it seen. 
When the spiritual energy is directed on something outward, 
then it is a thought. The relation between it and you first 
makes you, the value of you, apparent to me. The rich, in¬ 
ventive genius of the painter must be smothered and lost for 
•want of the power of drawing, and in our happy hours we 
should be inexhaustible poets, if once we could break through 
the silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some access 
to primary truth, so all have some art or power of communi¬ 
cation in their head, but only in the artist does it descend into 
the hand. There is an inequality, whose laws we do not yet 
know, between two men and between two moments of the 
same man, in respect to this faculty. In common, hours we 
have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they 
do not sit for their portraits; they are not detached, but lie 
in a web. The thought of genius is spontaneous; but the 
power of picture or expression, in the most enriched and flow¬ 
ing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over 
the spontaneous states, without which no production is possi¬ 
ble. It is a conversion of all nature into the rhetoric of 
thought, under the eye of judgment, with a strenuous exercise 
of choice. And yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be 
spontaneous also. It does not flow from experience only or 
mainly, but from a richer source. Not by any conscious im- 


INTELLECT. 


395 


itation of particular forms are the grand strokes of the painter 
executed, but by repairing to the fountain-head of all forms iv 
his mind. Who is the first drawing-master! Without in¬ 
struction we know very well the ideal of the human form. A 
child knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a picture, if the 
attitude be natural, or grand, or mean, though he has never 
received any instruction in drawing, or heard any conversa¬ 
tion on the subject, nor can himself draw correctly a single 
feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before 
they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets 
twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the 
mechanical proportions of the features and head. Wc may 
owe to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill ; for, as 
soon as we let our will go, and let the unconscious states 
ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are ! We entertain 
ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, 
of gardens, of woods, and of monsters, and the mystic pencil 
wherewith we then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, 
no meagreness or poverty ; it can design well, and group well; 
its composition is full of art, its colors are well laid on, and 
the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike, and apt to touch 
us with terror, with tenderness, with desire, and with grief. 
Neither are the artist’s copies from experience ever mere cop¬ 
ies, but always touched and softened by tints from this ideal 
domain. 

The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not ap¬ 
pear to be so often combined but that a good sentence or verse 
remains fresh and memorable for a long time. Yet when we 
write with ease, and come out into the free air of thought, we 
seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to continue this 
communication at pleasure. Up, down, around, the kingdom 
of thought has no enclosures, but the Muse makes us free of 
her city. Well, the world has a million writers. One would 
think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and 
water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. 
Yet we can count all our good books ; nay, I remember any 
beautiful verse for twenty years. It is true that the discern¬ 
ing intellect of the world is always much in advance of the cre¬ 
ative, so that there are many competent judges of the best 
book, and few writers of the best books. But some of the 
conditions of intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. 
The intellect is a whole, and demands integrity in every work. 
This is resisted equally by a man’s devotion to a single 
thought, and by his ambition to combine too many. 


396 


INTELLECT. 


Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his atten¬ 
tion on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that 
alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not it¬ 
self, but falsehood ; herein resembling the air, which is our 
natural element, and the breath of our nostrils, but if a stream 
of the same be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, 
fever, and even death. How wearisome the grammarian, the 
phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or indeed any 
possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of 
a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a 
prison also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught 
up by a strong wind, and blown so far in one direction that I 
am out of the hoop of your horizon. 

Is it any better, if the student, to avoid this offence, and to 
liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, 
or science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the 
facts that fall within his vision 1 The world refuses to be ana¬ 
lyzed by addition and subtraction. When we are young, we 
spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all 
definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope 
that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed 
into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at 
which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our 
tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our 
curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. 

Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, is the in¬ 
tegrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigi¬ 
lance which brings the intellect in its greatness and best state 
to operate every moment. It must have the same wholeness 
which nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild the uni¬ 
verse in a model, by the best accumulation or disposition of 
details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in every event, 
so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. 
The intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension 
and in its works. For this reason, an index or mercury of in¬ 
tellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk 
with accomplished persons who appear to be strangers in na¬ 
ture. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are not theirs, 
have nothing of them : the world is only their lodging and 
table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral and com¬ 
plete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of 
strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, 
and detects more likeness than variety in all her changes. We 


INTELLECT. 


397 


are stung by the desire for new thought; but when we receive 
a new thought, it is only the old thought with a new face, and 
though we make it our own, we instantly crave another; we 
are not really enriched. For the truth was in us before it was 
reflected to us from natural objects; and the profound genius 
will cast the likeness of all creatures into every product of his 
wit. 

But if the constructive powers are rare, and it is given to 
few men to be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this de¬ 
scending holy ghost, and may well study the laws of its influx. 
Exactly parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty to the 
rule of moral duty. A self-denial, no less austere than the 
saint s, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, 
and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so 
that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented. 

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and re¬ 
pose. Take which you please, — you can never have both. 
Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the 
love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first 
philosophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely 
his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but 
he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth 
predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and 
afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the 
opposite negations, between which, as walls, his being is swung. 
He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect 
opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, 
and respects the highest law of his being. 

The circle of the green earth he must measure with his 
shoes, to find the man who can yield him truth. He shall 
then know that there is somewhat more blessed and great in 
hearing than in speaking. Happy is the hearing man; un- 
happy the speaking man. As long as I hear truth, I am 
bathed by a beautiful element, and am not conscious of any 
limits to my nature. The suggestions are thousand-fold that I 
hear and see. The waters of the great deep have ingress and 
egress to the soul. But if I speak, I define, I confine, and am 
less. When Socrates speaks, Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted 
by no shame that they do not speak. They also are good. 
He likewise defers to them, loves them whilst he speaks. Be¬ 
cause a true and natural man contains and is the same truth 
which an eloquent man articulates : but in the eloquent man, 
because he can articulate it, it seems something the less to re- 


398 


INTELLECT. 


side, and he turns to these silent beautiful with the more in¬ 
clination and respect. The ancient sentence said, Let us be 
silent, for so are the gods. Silence is a solvent that destroys 
personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal. 
Every man’s progress is through a succession of teachers, each 
of whom seems at the time to have a superlative influence, but 
it at last gives place to a new. Frankly let him accept it all. 
Jesus says, Leave father, mother, house, and lands, and follow 
me. Who leaves all, receives more. This is as true intellec¬ 
tually as morally. Each new mind we approach seems to re¬ 
quire an abdication of all our past and present possessions. A 
new doctrine seems, at first, a subversion of all our opinions, 
tastes, and manner of living. Such has Swedenborg, such has 
Kant, such has Coleridge, such has Hegel or his interpreter 
Cousin, seemed to many young men in this country. Take 
thankfully and heartily all they can give. Exhaust them, 
wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, 
and, after a short season, the dismay will be overpast, the ex¬ 
cess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an 
alarming meteor, but one more bright star shining serenely in 
your heaven, and blending its l^ght with all your day. 

But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which 
draws him, because that is his own, he is to refuse himself to 
that which draws him not, whatsoever fame and authority may 
attend it, because it is not his own. Entire self-reliance be¬ 
longs to the intellect. One soul is a counterpoise of all souls, 
as a capillary column of water is a balance for the sea. It 
must treat things, and books, and sovereign genius, as itself 
also a sovereign. If Aeschylus be that man he is taken for, 
he has not yet done his office, when he has educated the 
learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now to ap¬ 
prove himself a master of delight to me also. If he cannot 
do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing with me. I were 
a fool not to sacrifice a thousand HCschyluses to my intel¬ 
lectual integrity. Especially take the same ground in regard 
to abstract truth, the science of the mind. The Bacon, the 
Spinoza, the Hume, Schelling, Kant, or whosoever propounds 
to you a philosophy of the mind, is only a more or less awk¬ 
ward translator of things in your consciousness, which you 
have also your way of seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say, 
then, instead of too timidly poring into his obscure sense, 
that he has not succeeded in rendering back to you your con¬ 
sciousness. He has not succeeded ; now let another try. If 
Plato cannot, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then 


INTELLECT. 


399 


perhaps Kant. Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will 
find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, common state, 
wdiich the writer restores to you. 

But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the 
subject might provoke it, speak to the open question between 
Truth and Love. I shall not presume to interfere in the old 
politics of the skies ; — “ The cherubim know most; the sera¬ 
phim love most.” The gods shall settle their own quarrels. 
But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, 
without remembering, that lofty and sequestered class who 
have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of 
the pure reason, the Trismegisti , the expounders of the princi¬ 
ples of thought from age to age. When, at long intervals, we 
turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and 
grand air of these few, these great spiritual lords, who have 
walked in the world, — these of the old religion, — dwelling 
in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christianity look 
parvenues and popular; for “ persuasion is in soul, but neces¬ 
sity is in intellect.” This band of grandees, Hermes, Heracli¬ 
tus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Syne- 
sius, and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so 
primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all 
the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be 
at once poetry, and music, and dancing, and astronomy, and 
mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of the 
world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the 
foundations of nature. The truth qpd grandeur of their 
thought is proved by its scope and applicability, for it com¬ 
mands the entire schedule and inventory of things for its 
illustration. But what marks its elevation, and has even a 
comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with which these 
babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and from age to age 
prattle to each other, and to no contemporary. Well assured 
that their speech is intelligible, and the most natural thing in 
the world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment’s heed 
of the universal astonishment of the human race below, who 
do not comprehend their plainest argument; nor do they ever 
relent so much as to insert a popular or explaining sentence; 
nor testify the least displeasure or petulance at the dulness of 
their amazed auditory. The angels are so enamored of the 
language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort 
their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but 
speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or 
not. 










ART 


* 


Give to barrows, trays, and pans 
Grace and glimmer of romance j 
Bring the moonlight into noon 
Hid in gleaming piles of stone; 

On the city’s paved street 
Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet; 
Let spouting fountains cool the air, 
Singing in the sun-baked square; 

Let statue, picture, park, and hall, 
Ballad, flag, and festival, 

The past restore, the day adorn, 

And make each morrow a new morn. 
So shall the drudge in dusty frock 
Spy behind the city clock 
Retinues of airy kings, 

Skirts of angels, starry wings, 

His fathers shining in bright fables, 
His children fed at heavenly tables. 

’T is the privilege of Art 
Thus to play its cheerful part, 

Man in Earth to acclimate, 

And bend the exile to his fate, 

And, moulded of one element 
With the days and firmament, 

Teach him on these as stairs to climb, 
And live on even terms with Time; 
Whilst upper life the slender rill 
Of human sense doth overfill. 


z 
















ART. 


B ecause the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats 
itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new 
and fairer whole. This appears in works both of the useful 
and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction of 
works according to their aim either at use or beauty. Thus 
in our fine arts, not imitation, but creation, is the aim. In 
landscapes, the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer 
creation than we know The details, the prose of nature he 
should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendor. He 
should know that the landscape has beauty for his eye, be¬ 
cause it expresses a thought which is to him good : and this, 
because the same power which sees through his eyes is seen in 
that spectacle; and he will come to value the expression of 
nature, and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the 
features that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom, 
and the sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait, he must inscribe 
the character, and not the features, and must esteem the man 
who sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or like¬ 
ness of the aspiring original within. 

What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all 
spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse h for it is the 
inlet of that higher illumination which teaches to convey a 
larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a man but nature’s 
finer success in self-explication 1 What is a man but a finer 
and compacter landscape than the horizon figures, — nature’s 
eclecticism 1 and what is his speech, his love of painting, love 
of nature, but a still finer success 1 all the weary miles and 
tons of space and bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of if 
contracted into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke 
of the pencil 1 

But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day 



404 


ART. 


and nation, to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. 
Thus the new in art is always formed out of the old. The 
Genius of the Hour sets his ineffaceable seal on the work, and 
gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagination. As far as 
the spiritual character of the period overpowers the artist, 
and finds expression in his work, so far it will retain a certain 
grandeur, and will represent to future beholders'the Unknown, 
the Inevitable, the Divine. No man can quite exclude this 
element of Necessity from his labor. No man can quite eman¬ 
cipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in 
which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, 
of his times shall have no share. Though he were never so 
original, never so wfilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his 
work every trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew T . The 
very avoidance betrays the usage he avoids. Above his will, 
and out of his sight, he is necessitated, by the air he breathes, 
and the idea on which he and his contemporaries live and toil, 
to share the manner of his times, without knowing what that 
manner is. Now that which is inevitable in the work has a 
higher charm than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch 
as the artist’s pen or chisel seems to have been held and 
guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the history 
of the human race. This circumstance gives a value to the 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese, and Mexican 
idols, however gross and shapeless. They denote the height 
of the human soul in that hour, and were not fantastic, but 
sprung from a necessity as deep as the world. Shall I now 
add, that the whole extant product of the plastic arts has 
herein its highest value, as history ; as a stroke drawn in the 
portrait of that fate, perfect and beautiful, according to whose 
ordinations all beings advance to their beatitude ? 

Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to 
educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in 
beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. It needs, by the 
exhibition of single traits, to assist and lead the dormant 
taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is carved and 
painted, as students of the mystery of Form. The virtue of 
art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the em¬ 
barrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from the con¬ 
nection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but 
no thought. Our happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. 
The infant lies in a pleasing trance, but his individual charac¬ 
ter and his practical power depend on his daily progress in the 


ART. 


405 


separation of things, and dealing with one at a time. Love 
and all the passions concentrate all existence around a single 
form. It is the habit of certain minds to give an all-excluding 
fulness to the object, the thought, the word, they alight upon, 
and to make that for the time the deputy of the world. These 
are the artists, the orators, the leaders of society. The power 
to detach, and to magnify by detaching, is the essence of 
rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the poet. This 
rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary eminency of an ob¬ 
ject, — so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle, — the 
painter and sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The power 
depends on the depth of the artist’s insight of that object he 
contemplates. For every object has its roots in central 
nature, and may of course be so exhibited to us as to represent 
the world. Therefore, each work of genius is the tyrant of/ 
the hour, and concentrates attention on itself. For the time, 
it is the only thing wmrth naming to do that, — be it a sonnet, 
an opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a tem¬ 
ple, of a campaign, or of a voyage of discovery. Presently 
we pass to some other object, which rounds itself into a whole, 
as did the first; for example, a well-laid garden : and nothing 
seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens. I should 
think fire the best thing in the world, if I were not acquainted 
with air, and water, and earth. For it is the right and prop¬ 
erty of all natural objects, of all genuine talents, of all native 
properties whatsoever, to be for their moment the top of the 
world. A squirrel leaping from bough to bough, and making 
the wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not 
less than a lion, — is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then 
and there for nature. A good ballad draws my ear and heart 
whilst I listen, as much as an epic has done before. A dog, 
drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a reality 
not less than the frescoes of Angelo. From this succession of 
excellent objects, we learn at last the immensity of the world, 
the opulence of human nature, which can run out to infinitude 
in any direction. But I also learn that what astonished and 
fascinated me in the first work astonished me in the second 
work also; that excellence of all things is one. 

The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely 
initial. The best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. 
The best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous 
dots and lines and dyes which make up the ever-changing 
“ landscape wfith figures ” amidst which we dwell. Painting 


406 


ART. 


seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When 
that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, 
to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; 
so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression 
of form, and, as I see many pictures and higher genius in the 
art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency 
in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible 
forms. If he can draw everything, why draw anything 1 and 
then is my eye opened to the eternal picture which nature 
paints in the street with moving men and children, beggars, 
and fine ladies, draped in red, and green, and blue, and gray ; 
long-haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, 
dwarf, expanded, elfish, — capped and based by heaven, earth, 
and sea. 

A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same les¬ 
son. As picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anat¬ 
omy of form. When I have seen fine statues, and afterwards 
enter a public assembly, I understand well what he meant 
who said, “ When I have been reading Homer, all men look 
like giants.” I too see that painting and sculpture are gym¬ 
nastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities 
of its function. There is no statue like this living man, with 
his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual 
variety. What a gallery of art have I here! No mannerist 
made these varied groups and diverse original single figures. 
Here is the artist himself improvising, grim and glad, at his 
block. Now one thought strikes him, now another, and with 
each moment he alters the whole air, attitude, and expression 
of his clay. Away with your nonsense of oil and easels, of 
marble and chisels : except to open your eyes to the masteries 
of eternal art, they are hypocritical rubbish. 

The reference of all production at last to an aboriginal 
Power explains the traits common to all works of the highest 
art, — that they are universally intelligible ; that they restore 
to us the simplest states of mind; and are religious. Since 
what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of the original 
soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce a similar impres¬ 
sion to that made by natural objects. In happy hours, nature 
appears to us one with art; art perfected, — the work of 
genius. And the individual, in whom simple tastes and sus¬ 
ceptibility to all the great human influences overpower the 
accidents of a local and special culture, is the best critic of 
art. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, 


ART. 


407 


we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of 
beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or 
rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the 
work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression 
through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest 
and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most 
intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes. 
In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of the Ro¬ 
mans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian mas¬ 
ters, the highest charm is the universal language they speak. 
A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, 
breathes from them all. That which we carry to them, the 
same we bring back more fairly illustrated in the memory. 
The traveller who visits the Vatican, and passes from cham¬ 
ber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, sarco¬ 
phagi, and candelabra, through all forms of beauty, cut in 
the richest materials, is in danger of forgetting the simplicity 
of the principles out of which they all sprung, and that they 
had their origin from thoughts and laws in his own breast. 
He studies the technical rules on these wonderful remains, 
but forgets that these works were not always thus constel¬ 
lated ; that they are the contributions of many ages and 
many countries; that each came out of the solitary work¬ 
shop of one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the 
existence of other sculpture, created his work without other 
model, save life, household life, and the sweet and smart of 
personal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes, of 
poverty, and necessity, and hope, and fear. These were his 
inspirations, and these are the effects he carries home to your 
heart and mind. In proportion to his force, the artist will 
find in his work an outlet for his proper character. He must 
not be in any manner pinched or hindered by his material, 
but through his necessity of imparting himself the adamant 
will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate com¬ 
munication of himself, in his full stature and proportion. 
He need not cumber himself with a conventional nature and 
culture, nor ask what is the mode in Rome or in Paris, but 
that house, and weather, and manner of living which pov¬ 
erty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious and 
so dear, in the gray, unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of 
a New Hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the backwoods, 
or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the con¬ 
straints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve as well as 


408 


ART. 


any other condition as the symbol of a thought which pours 
itself indifferently through all. 

I remember, when in my younger days I had heard of the 
wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures 
would be great strangers; some surprising combination of 
color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, 
like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which play 
such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I 
was to see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at 
last to Rome, and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that 
genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, 
and itself pierced directly to the simple and true; that it 
was familiar and sincere ; that it was the old, eternal fact I 
had met already in so many forms, — unto which I lived ; 
that it was the plain you and me I knew so well, — had left 
at home in so many conversations. I had the same experi¬ 
ence already in a church at Naples. There I saw that noth¬ 
ing was changed with me but the place, and said to myself, 
‘Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over four 
thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was perfect 
to thee there at home 1 ’ — that fact I saw again in the 
Academmia at Naples, in the chambers of sculpture, and 
yet again when I came to Rome, and to the paintings of 
Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. 
“ What, old mole ! workest thou in the earth so fast 1 ” It 
had travelled by my side : that which I fancied I had left 
in Boston was here in the Vatican, and again at Milan, and 
at Paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as a treadmill. 
I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, 
not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too pictu¬ 
resque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense 
and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and 
all great pictures are. 

The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent example of 
this peculiar merit. A calm, benignant beauty shines over all 
this picture, and goes directly to the heart. It seems almost 
to call you by name. The sweet and sublime face of {Jesus is 
beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid expectations! 
This familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance is as if one 
should meet a friend. The knowledge of picture-dealers has 
its value, but listen not to their criticism when your heart is 
touched by genius. It was not painted for them, it was 
painted for you; for such as had eyes capable of being 
touched by simplicity and lofty emotions. 


ART. 


409 


Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, 
we must end with a frank confession, that the arts, as we know 
them, are but initial. Our best praise is given to what they 
aimed and promised, not to the actual result. He has con¬ 
ceived meanly of the resources of man, who believes that the 
best age of production is past. The real value of the Iliad, 
or the Transfiguration, is as signs of power; billows or ripples 
they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of the everlasting 
effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul be¬ 
trays. Art has not yet come to its maturity, if it do not put 
itself abreast with the most potent influences of the world, if 
it is not practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection 
with the conscience, if it do not make the poor and unculti¬ 
vated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. 
There is higher work for Art than the arts. They are abortive 
births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is the need to 
create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is im¬ 
patient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making 
cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. 
Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end. 
A man should find in it an outlet for his whole energy. He 
may paint and carve only as long as he can do that. Art 
should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance 
on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of 
universal relation and power which the work evinced in the 
artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists. 

Already History is old enough to witness the old age and 
disappearance of particular arts. The art of sculpture is long 
ago perished to any real effect. It was originally a useful art, 
a mode of writing, a savage’s record of gratitude or devotion, 
and among a people possessed of a wonderful perception of 
form this childish carving was refined to the utmost splendor 
of effect. But it is the game of a rude and youthful people, 
and not the manly labor of a wise and spiritual nation. Un¬ 
der an oak-tree loaded with leaves and nuts, under a sky full 
of eternal eyes, I stand in a thoroughfare ; but in the works 
of our plastic arts, and especially of sculpture, creation is 
driven into a corner. I cannot hide from myself that there 
is a certain appearance of paltriness, as of toys, and the 
trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. Nature transcends all 
our moods of thought, and its secret we do not yet find. But 
the gallery stands at the mercy of our moods, and there is a 
moment when it becomes frivolous. I do not wonder that 
18 


410 


ART. 


Newton, with an attention habitually engaged on the paths of 
planets and suns, should have wondered what the Earl of Pem¬ 
broke found to admire in “ stone dolls.” Sculpture may serve 
to teach the pupil how deep is the secret of form, how purely 
the spirit can translate its meanings into that eloquent dialect. 
But the statue will look cold and false before that new activity 
which needs to roll through all things, and is impatient of 
counterfeits, and things not alive. Picture and sculpture are 
the celebrations and festivities of form. But true art is never 
fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest music is not in the 
oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its in¬ 
stant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio 
has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and 
the earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these. 
All works of art should not be detached, but extempore per¬ 
formances. A great man is a new statue in every attitude and 
action. A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all be¬ 
holders nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a 
poem or a romance. 

A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were 
found worthy to declare it, would carry art up into the king¬ 
dom of nature, and destroy its separate and contrasted exist¬ 
ence. The fountains of invention and beauty in modern 
society are all but dried up. A popular novel, a theatre, or a 
ball-room makes us feel that we are all paupers in the alms¬ 
house of this world, without dignity, without skill, or industry. 
Art is as poor and low. The old tragic Necessity, which 
lowers on the brows even of the Venuses and the Cupids of 
the antique, and furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of 
such anomalous figures into nature, — namely, that they were 
inevitable; that the artist was drunk with a passion for form 
which he could not resist, and which vented itself in these 
fine extravagances, — no longer dignifies the chisel or the 
pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in art 
the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the evils of 
life. Men are not well pleased with the figure they make in 
their own imaginations, and they flee to art, and convey their 
better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes 
the same effort which a sensual prosperity makes ; namely, to 
detach the beautiful from the useful, to do up the work as 
unavoidable, and, hating it, pass on to enjoyment. These 
solaces and compensations, this division of beauty from use, 
the laws of nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is 


ART. 


411 


sought, not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades 
the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him in 
canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; an ef¬ 
feminate, prudent, sickly beauty, -which is not beauty, is all 
that can be formed ; for the hand can never execute anything 
higher than the character can inspire. 

The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art 
must not be a superficial talent, but must begin further back in 
man. Now men do not see nature to be beautiful, and they 
go to make a statue which shall be. They abhor men as taste¬ 
less, dull, and inconvertible, and console themselves with color- 
bags, and blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and 
create a death which they call poetic. They despatch the day’s 
weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and 
drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is 
art vilified ; the name conveys to the mind its secondary and 
bad senses ; it stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary 
to nature, and struck wdth death from the first. Would it not 
be better to begin higher up, — to serve the ideal before they 
eat and drink; to serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in 
drawing the breath, and in the functions of life 1 Beauty 
must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between 
the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were 
truly told, if life -were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy 
or possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, 
all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because 
it is alive, moving, reproductive ; it is therefore useful, because 
it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call 
of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its his¬ 
tory in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and 
spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in 
vain that we look for genius to reiterate its mirales in the old 
arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and 
necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and mill. 
Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use 
the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company, our 
law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic bat¬ 
tery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist’s retort, in 
which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish 
and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical 
works, — to mills, railways, and machinery, — the effect of the 
mercenary impulses which these works obey 1 When its er¬ 
rands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic 


412 


ART. 


between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with 
the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony 
with nature. The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies along 
the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When 
science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, 
they will appear the supplements and continuations of the 
material creation. 


THE POET. 


A moody child and wildly wise 
Pursued the game with joyful eyes, 

Which chose, like meteors, their way, 

And rived the dark with private ray : 

They overleapt the horizon’s edge, 

Searched with Apollo’s privilege; 

Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, 

Saw the dance of nature forward far; 

Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, 
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. 



Olympian bards who sung 
Divine ideas below, 

Which always find us young, 
And always keep us so. 


THE POET. 


T HOSE who are esteemed umpires of taste are often per¬ 
sons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pic¬ 
tures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is 
elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, 
and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn 
that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, 
as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce 
fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine 
arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited 
judgment of color or form, which is exercised for amusement 
or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of 
beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem 
to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form 
upon soul. There is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. 
We were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be 
carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between 
the spirit and the organ, much less is the latter the germina¬ 
tion of the former. So in regard to other forms, the intellec¬ 
tual men do not believe in any essential dependence of the ma¬ 
terial world on thought and volition. Theologians think it a 
pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or 
a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again 
to the solid ground of historical evidence ; and even the poets are 
contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, and to 
write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own 
experience. But the highest minds of the world have never 
ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the 
quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of 
every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, 
Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, 
picture, and poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, not 



416 


THE POET. 


even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the 
fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted, and 
at two or three removes, when we know least about it. And 
this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of 
Time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and 
beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and 
functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty, to the means and 
materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the 
present time. 

The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is repre¬ 
sentative. He stands among partial men for the complete 
man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common¬ 
wealth. The young man reveres men of genius, because, to 
speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive 
of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature en¬ 
hances her beauty to the eye of loving men, from their belief 
that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is 
isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, 
but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw 
all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth, and stand 
in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, 
in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. 
The man is only half himself, the other half is his expres¬ 
sion. 

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate 
expression is rare. I know not how it is that we need an in¬ 
terpreter ; but the great majority of men seem to be minors, 
who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, 
who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. 
There is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility 
in the sun, and stars, earth and water. These stand and wait 
to render him a peculiar service. But there is some obstruc¬ 
tion, or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does 
not suffer them to yield the due effect. Too feeble fall the 
impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch 
should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist, that 
he could report in conversation what had befallen him. Yet, 
in our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient force 
to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and 
compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. The poet 
is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man 
without impediment, who sees and handles that which others 
dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is rep- 


THE POET. 417 

resentative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to re¬ 
ceive and to impart. 

For the Universe has three children, born at one time, 
which reappear, under different names, in every system of 
thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; 
or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or theologically, 
the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call 
here, the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer. These stand 
respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for 
the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that 
which he is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or 
analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others 
latent in him, and his own patent. 

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. 
He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is 
not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; 
and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is 
the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any 
permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criti¬ 
cism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that 
manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and dis¬ 
parages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that 
some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the 
world to the end of expression, and confounds them with 
those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate 
the sayers. But Homer’s words are as costly and admirable 
to Homer, as Agamemnon’s victories are to Agamemnon. 
The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act 
and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must 
be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, 
in respect to him, secondaries and servants ; as sitters or mod¬ 
els in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring build¬ 
ing materials to an architect. 

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever 
we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that 
region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, 
and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a 
word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and 
thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write 
down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, 
though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For na¬ 
ture is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, 
and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. 

18 * aa 


418 


THE POET. 


Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine 
energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of 
words. 

The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces 
that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor ; 
he knows and tells ; he is the only teller of news, for he was 
present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He 
is a beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and 
casual. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, 
or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I took 
part in a conversation, the other day, concerning a recent 
writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, wffiose head appeared 
to be a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose 
skill and command of language we could not sufficiently praise. 
But when the question arose, whether he was not only a lyrist, 
but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is plainly a con¬ 
temporary, not an eternal man. He does not stand out of 
our low limitations, like a Chimborazo under the line, running 
up from a torrid base through all the climates of the globe, 
with belts of the herbage of every latitude on its high and 
mottled sides ; but this genius is the landscape-garden of a 
modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, with well- 
bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks and 
terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the ground- 
tone of conventional life. Our poets are men of talents who 
sing, and not the children of music. The argument is second¬ 
ary, the finish of the verses is primary. 

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that 
makes a poem, — a thought so passionate and alive, that, like 
the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its 
own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and 
the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of 
genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new 
thought : he has a whole new experience to unfold ; he will 
tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in 
his fortune. For the experience of each new age requires a 
new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its 
poet. I remember, when I was young, how much I was moved 
one morning by tidings that genius had appeared in a youth 
who sat near me at table. He had left his work, and gone 
rambling none knew whither, and had written hundreds of 
lines, but could not tell whether that which was in him was 
therein told : he could tell nothing but that all was changed, 


THE POET. 


419 


«—man, beast, heaven, earth, and sea. How gladly we lis¬ 
tened ! how credulous ! Society seemed to be compromised. 
We sat in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all the 
stars. Boston seemed to be at twice the distance it had the 
night before, or was much farther than that. Rome, — what 
was Rome'? Plutarch and Shakespeare were in the yellow leaf, 
and Homer no more should be heard of. It is much to know 
that poetry has been written this very day, under this very 
roof, by your side. What! that wonderful spirit has not ex¬ 
pired ! These stony moments are still sparkling and animat¬ 
ed ! I had fancied that the oracles were all silent, and nature 
had spent her fires, and behold ! all night, from every pore, 
these fine auroras have been streaming. Every one has some 
interest in the advent of the poet, and no one knows how 
much it may concern him. We know that the secret of the 
world is profound, but who or what shall be our interpreter, 
we know not. A mountain ramble, a new style of face, a new 
person, may put the key into our hands. Of course, the value 
of genius to us is in the veracity of its report. Talent may 
frolic and juggle ; genius realizes and adds. Mankind, in good 
earnest, have arrived so far in understanding themselves and 
their work, that the foremost watchman on the peak an¬ 
nounces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken, and 
the phrase will be‘the fittest, most musical, and the unerring 
voice of the world for that time. 

All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a 
poet is the principal event in chronology. Man, never so of¬ 
ten deceived, still watches for the arrival of a brother who can 
hold him steady to a truth, until he has made it his own. 
With what joy I begin to read a poem, which I confide in as 
an inspiration ! And now my chains are to be broken ; I shall 
mount above these clouds and opaque airs in which I live, — 
opaque, though they seem transparent,— and from the heaven 
of truth I shall see and comprehend my relations. That will 
reconcile me to life, and renovate nature, to see trifles animat¬ 
ed by a tendency, and to know what I am doing. Life will 
no more be a noise; now I shall see men and women, and 
know the signs by which they may be discerned from fools 
and satans. This day shall be better than my birthday : then 
I became an animal : now I am invited into the science of the 
real. Such is the hope, but the fruition is postponed. Often- 
er it falls that this winged man, who will carry me into the 
heaven, whirls me into mists, then leaps and frisks about with 


420 


THE POET. 


me as it were from cloud to cloud, still affirming that he is 
bound heavenward ; and I, being myself a novice, am slow in 
perceiving that he does not know the way into the heavens, 
and is merely bent that I should admire his skill to rise, like a 
fowl or a flying-fish, a little way from the ground or the water ; 
but the all-piercing, all-feeding, and ocular air of heaven, that 
man shall never inhabit. I tumble down again soon into 
my old nooks, and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and 
have lost my faith in the possibility of any guide who can lead 
me thither where I would be. 

But, leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with new hope, 
observe how nature, by worthier impulses, has insured the poet’s 
fidelity to his office of announcement and affirming, name¬ 
ly, by the beauty of things, which becomes a new and higher 
beauty, when expressed. Nature offers all her creatures to 
him as a picture-language. Being used as a type, a second 
wonderful value appears in the object, far better than its old 
value, as the carpenter’s stretched cord, if you hold your ear 
close enough, is musical in the breeze. “ Things more excel¬ 
lent than every image,” says Jamblichus, “ are expressed 
through images.” Things admit of being used as symbols, 
because nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in every part. 
Every line we can draw in the sand has expression ; and there 
is nobody without its spirit or genius. All form is an effect 
of character ; all condition, of the quality of the life; all har¬ 
mony, of health ; (and, for this reason, a perception of beauty 
should be sympathetic, or proper only to the good.) The 
beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary. The soul 
makes the body, as the wise Spenser teaches : — 

“ So every spirit, as it is more pure, 

And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 

So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight, 

With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 

For, of the soul, the body form doth take, 

For soul is form, and doth the body make.” 

Here we find ourselves, suddenly, not in a critical specula¬ 
tion, but in a holy place, and should go very warily and rever¬ 
ently. We stand before the secret of the world, there where 
Being passes into Appearance, and Unity into Variety. 

The Universe is the externization of the soul. Wherever 
the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science 
is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth and the heav¬ 
enly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if 


THE POET. 


421 


they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Be¬ 
ing we have. “ The mighty heaven,” said Proclus, “ exhibits, 
in its transfigurations, clear images of the splendor of intel¬ 
lectual perceptions; being moved in conjunction with the un- 
apparent periods of intellectual natures.” Therefore, science 
always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keep¬ 
ing step with religion and metaphysics ; or, the state of science 
Js an index of our self-knowledge. Since everything in nature 
answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute 
and dark, it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer 
is not yet active. 

No wonder, then, if these waters be so deep, that we hover 
over them with a religious regard. The beauty of the fable 
proves the importance of the sense; to the poet, and to all 
others ; or, if you please, every man is so far a poet as to be 
susceptible of these enchantments of nature ; for all men have 
the thoughts whereof the universe is the celebration. I find 
that the fascination resides in the symbol. Who loves nature 1 
Who does not ? Is it only poets, and men of leisure and cul¬ 
tivation, who live with her? No; but also hunters, farmers, 
grooms, and butchers, though they express their affection in 
their choice of life, and not in their choice of words. The 
writer wonders what the coachman or the hunter values in rid¬ 
ing, in horses, and dogs. It is not superficial qualities. When 
you talk with him, he holds these at as slight a rate as you. 
His worship is sympathetic; he has no definitions, but he is 
commanded in nature, by the living power which he feels to be 
there present. No imitation, or playing of these things, would 
content him; he loves the earnest of the north wind, of rain, 
of stone, and wood, and iron. A. beauty not explicable is 
dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It is na¬ 
ture the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body over¬ 
flowed by life, which he worships, with coarse but sincere rites. 

The inwardness and mystery of this attachment drive men 
of every class to the use of emblems. The schools of poets, 
and philosophers, are not more intoxicated with their symbols, 
than the populace with theirs. In our political parties, com¬ 
pute the power of badges and emblems. See the huge wooden 
ball lately rolled from Baltimore to Bunker Hill! In the po¬ 
litical processions, Lowell goes in a loom, and Lynn in a shoe, 
and Salem in a ship. Witness the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, 
the hickory-stick, the palmetto, and all the cognizances of party. 
See the power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, 


m 


THE POET. 


a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figure, which came into credit 
Cod knows how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind, 
on a fort, at the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle 
under the rudest or the most conventional exterior. The people 
fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics ! 

Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are 
apprised of the divineness of this superior use of things, 
whereby the world is a temple, whose walls are covered with 
emblems, pictures, and commandments of the Deity, in this, 
that there is no fact in nature which does not carry the whole 
sense, .of nature ; and the distinctions which we make in events, 
and inr affairs, of low and high, honest and base, disappear 
when nature is used as a symbol. Thought makes everything 
fit for use. The vocabulary of an omniscient man would em¬ 
brace words and images excluded from polite conversation. 
What would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes 
illustrious, spoken in a new connection of thought. The piety 
of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circum¬ 
cision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low 
and offensive. Small and mean things serve as well as great 
symbols. The meaner the type by which a law is expressed, 
the more pungent it is, and the more lasting in the memories 
of men : just as we choose the smallest box, or case, in which 
any needful utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are 
found suggestive, to an imaginative and excited mind; as it is 
related of Lord Chatham, that he was accustomed to read in 
Bailey’s Dictionary, when he was preparing to speak in Parlia¬ 
ment. The poorest experience is rich enough for all the pur¬ 
poses of expressing thought. Why covet a knowledge of new 
facts ? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few 
actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. 
We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few 
symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terri¬ 
ble simplicity. It does not need that a poem should be long. 
Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new 
word. Also, we use defects and deformities to a sacred, pur¬ 
pose, so expressing our sense that the evils of the world are 
such only to the evil eye. In the old mythology, mythologists 
observe, defects are ascribed to divine natures, as lameness 
to Vulcan, blindness to Cupid, and the like, to signify exuber¬ 
ances. 

For, as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God, 
that makes things ugly, the poet, who reattaches things to 


THE POET. 


423 


nature and the Whole, — reattaching even artificial things, and 
violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight, — disposes 
very easily of the most disagreeable facts. Readers of poetry 
see the factory village and the railway, and fancy that the 
poetry of the landscape is broken up by these; for these works 
of art are not yet consecrated in their reading ; but the poet 
sees them fall within the great Order not less than the beehive, 
or the spider’s geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast 
into her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars she loves 
like her own. Besides, in a centred mind, it signifies nothing 
how many mechanical inventions you exhibit. Though you add 
millions, and never so surprising, the fact of mechanics has not 
gained a grain’s weight. The spiritual fact remains unalter¬ 
able, by many or by few particulars; as no mountain is of any 
appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. A shrewd 
country boy goes to the city for the first time, and the compla¬ 
cent citizen is not satisfied with his little w r onder. It is not 
that he does not see all the fine houses, and know that he never 
saw such before, but he disposes of them as easily as the poet 
finds place for the railway. The chief value of the' new fact, 
is to enhance the great and constant fact of Life, which can 
dwarf any and every circumstance, and to which the belt of 
wampum, and the commerce of America, arealike. 

The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, 
the poet is he who can articulate it. For, though life is great, 
and fascinates, and absorbs, — and though all men are intelli¬ 
gent of the symbols through which it is named, — yet they 
cannot originally use them. We are symbols, and inhabit 
symbols ; workmen, work, and tools, words and things, birth 
and death, all are emblems ; but we sympathize with the sym¬ 
bols, and, being infatuated with the economical uses of things, 
we do not know that they are thoughts. The poet, by an ulte¬ 
rior intellectual perception, gives them a power which makes 
their old use forgotten, and puts eyes, and a tongue, into every 
dumb and inanimate object. He perceives the independence 
of the thought on the symbol, the stability of the thought, the 
accidency and fugacity of the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncoeus 
were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world 
to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and pro¬ 
cession. For, through that better perception, he stands one 
step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or metamorphosis; 
perceives that thought is multiform ; that within the form of 
every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher 


424 


THE POET. 


form ; and, following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which 
express that life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of 
nature. All the facts of the animal economy, — sex, nutri¬ 
ment, gestation, birth, growth — are symbols of the passage of 
the world into the soul of man, to suffer there a change, and 
reappear a new and higher fact. He uses forms according to 
the life and not according to the form. This is true science. 
The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and 
animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them 
as signs. He knows why the plain or meadow of space was 
strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; 
why the great deep is adorned with animals, with men, and 
gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the 
horses of thought. 

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language- 
maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, some¬ 
times after their essence, and giving to every one its own name 
and not another’s, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights 
in detachment or boundary. The poets made all the words, 
and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we 
must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the 
origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first 
a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the mo¬ 
ment it symbolized the w r orld to the first speaker and to the 
hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been 
once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the 
limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the 
shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or 
tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to 
remind us of their poetic origin. "But the poet names the 
thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than 
any other. This expression, or naming, is not art, but a second 
nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What 
we call nature, is a certain self-regulated motion, or change; 
and nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leave 
another to baptize her, but baptizes herself; and this through 
the metamorphosis again. I remember that a certain poet de¬ 
scribed it to me thus : — 

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, 
whether -wholly or partly of a material and finite kind. Na¬ 
ture, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody 
cares for planting the poor fungus : so she shakes down from 


THE POET. 


425 


the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being 
preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next 
day. The new agaric of this hour has a chance which the 
old one had not. This atom of seed is thrown into a new 
place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed its parent 
two rods off. She makes a man ; and having brought him to 
ripe age, she will no longer run the risk of losing this wonder 
at a blow, but she detaches from him a new self, that the kind 
may be safe from accidents to which the individual is exposed. 
So when the soul of the poet has come to ripeness of thought, 
she detaches and sends away from it its poems or songs, — a 
fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed to 
the accidents of the weary kingdom of time; a fearless, viva¬ 
cious offspring, clad with wings (such was the virtue of the 
soul out of which they came), which carry them fast and far, 
and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of men. These 
wings are the beauty of the poet’s soul. The songs, thus 
flying immortal from their mortal parent, are pursued by 
clamorous flights of censures, which swarm in far greater 
numbers, and threaten to devour them; but these last are 
not winged. At the end of a very short leap they fall plump 
down, and rot, having received from the souls out of which 
they came no beautiful wings. But the melodies of the poet 
ascend, and leap, and pierce into the deeps of infinite time. 

So far the bard taught me, using his freer speech. But 
nature has a higher end, in the production of new individ¬ 
uals, than security, namely, ascension , or, the passage of the 
soul into higher forms. I knew, in my younger days, the 
sculptor who made the statue of the youth which stands in 
the public garden. He was, as I remember, unable to tell 
directly, -what made him happy, or unhappy, but by wonder¬ 
ful indirections he could tell. He rose one day, according to 
his habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand 
as the eternity out of which it came, and, for many days after, 
he strove to express this tranquillity, and, lo! his chisel had 
fashioned out of marble the form of a beautiful youth, Phos¬ 
phorus, whose aspect is such, that, it is said, all persons w r ho 
look on it become silent. The poet also resigns himself to 
his mood, and that thought which agitated him is expressed, 
but alter idem , in. a manner totally new. The expression is 
organic, or, Ihe new type wdiich things themselves take when 
liberated. As, in the sun, objects paint their images on the 


426 


THE POET. 


retina of the eye, so they, sharing the aspiration of the 
whole universe, tend to paint a far more delicate copy of 
their essence in his mind. Like the metamorphosis of things 
into higher organic forms, is their change into melodies. Over 
everything stands its demon, or soul, and, as the form of the 
thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is re¬ 
flected by a melody. The sea, the mountain ridge, Niagara, 
and every flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-canta- 
tions, which sail like odors in the air, and when any man 
goes by with an ear sufficiently fine, he overhears them, and 
endeavors to write down the notes, without diluting or de¬ 
praving them. And herein is the legitimation of criticism, 
in the mind’s faith, that the poems are a corrupt version of 
some text in nature, with which they ought to be made to 
tally. A rhyme in one of our sonnets should not be less 
pleasing than the iterated nodes of a seashell, or the resem¬ 
bling difference of a group of flowers. The pairing of the 
birds is an idyl, not tedious as our idyls are; a tempest is a 
rough ode, without falsehood or rant : a summer, with its 
harvest sown, reaped, and stored, is an epic song, subordi¬ 
nating how many admirably executed parts. Why should 
not the symmetry and truth that modulate these glide into 
our spirits, and we participate the invention of nature % 

This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Im¬ 
agination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come 
by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, 
by sharing the path or circuit of things through forms, and 
so making them translucid to others. The path of things is 
silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them 1 A spy 
they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the transcendency of 
their own nature, — him they will suffer. The condition of 
true naming, on the poet’s part, is his resigning himself to 
the divine aura which breathes through forms, and accom¬ 
panying that. 

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, 
that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intel¬ 
lect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled 
on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, be¬ 
side his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a 
great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at 
all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to 
roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the 
life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, 


THE POET. 


427 


and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and 
animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, 
only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, “ with the flower 
of the mind ” ; not with the intellect, used as an organ, but 
with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to 
take its direction from its celestial life; or, as the ancients 
were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but 
with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveller who 
has lost his way throws his reins on his horse’s neck, and 
trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must 
we do with the divine animal who carries us through this 
world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, 
new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows 
into and through things hardest and highest, and the meta¬ 
morphosis is possible. 

This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, 
coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal-wood and tobacco, or 
whatever other procurers of animal exhilaration. All men 
avail themselves of such means as they can, to add this extraor¬ 
dinary power to their normal powers ; and to this end they 
prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, dancing, thea¬ 
tres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming, politics, or love, or 
science, or animal intoxication, which are several coarser or 
finer gwcm-mechanical substitutes for the true nectar, which 
is the ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the 
fact. These are auxiliaries to the centrifugal tendency of a 
man, to his passage out into free space, and they help him to 
escape the custody of that body in which he is pent up, and of 
that jail-yard of individual relations in which he is enclosed. 
Hence a great number of such as were professionally ex- 
pressors of Beauty, as painters, poets, musicians, and actors, 
have been more than others wont to lead a life of pleasure and 
indulgence : all but the few who received the true nectar; and, 
as it was a spurious mode of attaining freedom, as it was an 
emancipation not into the heavens, but into the freedom of 
baser places, they were punished for that advantage they won, 
by a dissipation and deterioration. But never can any advan¬ 
tage be taken of nature by a trick. The spirit of the world, 
the great calm presence of the Creator, comes not forth to the 
sorceries of opium or of wine. The sublime vision comes to 
the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. That is 
not an inspiration which we owe to narcotics, but some coun¬ 
terfeit excitement and fury. Milton says that the lyric poet 


428 


THE POET. 


may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who 
shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink 
water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not ‘ Devil’s wine/ 
but God’s wine. It is with this as it is with toys. We fill 
the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of 
dolls, drums, and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the 
plain face and sufficing objects of nature, the sun, and moon, 
the animals, the water, and stones, which should be their toys. 
So the poet’s habit of living should be set on a key so low, that 
the common influences should delight him. His cheerfulness 
should be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice for 
his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water. That spir¬ 
it which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to 
such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine stump, 
and half-imbedded stone, on w T hich the dull March sun shines, 
comes forth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple 
taste. If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with 
fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses 
with wine and French coffee, thou slialt find no radiance of 
wisdom in the lonely waste of the pine-woods. 

If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not inactive in 
other men. The metamorphosis excites in the beholder ail 
emotion of joy. The use of symbols has a certain power of 
emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be 
touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about hap¬ 
pily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a 
cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of 
tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus 
liberating gods. Men have really got a new sense, and found 
within their world another world, or nest of worlds ; for, the 
metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it does not stop. I 
wull not now consider how much this makes the charm of al¬ 
gebra and the mathematics, which also have their tropes, but 
it is felt in every definition ; as, when Aristotle defines space 
to be an immovable vessel, in which things are contained; or, 
when Plato defines a line to be a flowing point; or, figure to 
be a bound of solid ; and many the like. What a joyful sense 
of freedom we have, when Vitruvius announces the old opinion 
of artists, that no architect can build any house well, who does 
not know something of anatomy. When Socrates, in Char- 
mides, tells us that the soul is cured of its maladies by certain 
incantations, and that these incantations are beautiful reasons, 
from which temperance is generated in souls; when Plato calls 


THE POET. 


429 


the world an animal; and Timseus affirms that the plants also 
are animals; or affirms a man to be a heavenly tree, growing 
with its root, which is his head, upward; and, as George 
Chapman, following him, writes, — 

“ So in our tree of man, whose nervie root 
Springs in his top ’’; 

when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as “ that white flower which 
marks extreme old age ” ; when Proclus calls the universe the 
statue of the intellect; when Chaucer, in his praise of ‘ Gen- 
tilesse,’ compares good blood in mean condition to fire, which, 
though carried to the darkest house betwixt this and the 
mount of Caucasus, will yet hold its natural office, and burn as 
bright as if twenty thousand men did it behold; when John 
saw, in the Apocalypse, the ruin of the world through evil, 
and the stars fall from Heaven, as the fig-tree casteth her un¬ 
timely fruit; when A3sop reports the whole catalogue of com¬ 
mon daily relations through the masquerade of birds and 
beasts; we take the cheerful hint of the immortality of our 
essence, and its versatile habit and escapes, as when the 
gypsies say of themselves, “ It is in vain to hang them, they 
cannot die.” 

The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British 
bards had for the title of their order, “ Those who are free 
throughout the world.” They are free and they make free. An 
imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by 
stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we 
arrive at the precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of 
any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraor¬ 
dinary. If a man is inflamed and carried away by his 
thought, to that degree that he forgets the authors and the 
public, and heeds only this one dream, which holds him like 
an insanity, let me read his paper, and you may have all the 
arguments and histories and criticism. All the value which 
attaches to Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Cornelius, Agrippa, Car¬ 
dan, Kepler, Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other who 
introduces questionable facts into his cosmogony, as angels, 
devils, magic, astrology, palmistry, mesmerism, and so on, is 
the certificate we have of departure from routine, and that 
here is a new witness. That also is the best success in con¬ 
versation, the magic of liberty, which puts the world, like a 
ball, in our hands. How cheap even the liberty then seems; 
how mean to study, when an emotion communicates to the in¬ 
tellect the power to sap and upheave nature : how great the 


430 


THE POET. 


perspective! nations, times, systems, enter and disappear, like 
threads in tapestry of large figure and many colors ; dream 
delivers us to dream, and, while the drunkenness lasts, we 
will sell our bed, our philosophy, our religion, in our opulence. 

There is good reason why we should prize this liberation. 
The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the 
snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage 
door, is an emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the 
waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying. The inac¬ 
cessibleness of every thought but that we &re in, is wonderful. 
What if you come near to it, —you are as remote, when you 
are nearest, as when you are farthest. Every thought is also 
a prison; every Heaven is also a prison. Therefore we love 
the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode, or 
in an action, or in looks and behavior, has yielded us a new 
thought. He unlocks our chains, and admits us to a new scene. 

This emancipation is dear to all men, and the power to im¬ 
part it, as it must come from greater depth and scope of 
thought, is a measure of intellect. Therefore all books of the 
imagination endure, all which ascend to that truth, that the 
writer sees nature beneath him, and uses it as his exponent. 
Every verse or sentence, possessing this virtue, will take care 
of its own immortality. The religions of the world are the 
ejaculations of a few imaginative men. 

But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. 
The poet did not stop at the color, or the form, but read their 
meaning, neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the 
same objects exponents of his new thought. Here is the differ¬ 
ence betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol 
to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon be¬ 
comes old and false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language 
is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, 
for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. 
Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and indi¬ 
vidual symbol for an universal one. The morning redness 
happens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob Beh- 
men, and comes to stand to him for truth and faith ; and he 
believes should stand for the same realities to every reader. 
But the first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a moth¬ 
er and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweller polishing 
a gem. Either of these, or of a myriad more, are equally good 
to the person to whom they are significant. Only they must 
be held lightly, and be very willingly translated into the 


THE POET. 


431 


equivalent terms which others use. And the mystic must be 
steadily told, All that you say is just as true without the 
tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little 
algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric, — universal signs, in¬ 
stead of these village symbols, — and we shall both be gain¬ 
ers. The history of hierarchies seems to show, that all re¬ 
ligious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and 
solid, and, at last, nothing but an excess of the organ of 
language. 

Swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands eminently 
for the translator of nature into thought. I do not know the 
man in history to whom things stood so uniformly for words. 
Before him the metamorphosis continually plays. Everything 
on which his eye rests obeys the impulses of moral nature. 
The figs become grapes whilst he eats them. When some of 
his angels affirmed a truth, the laurel twig which they held 
blossomed in their hands. The noise which, at a distance, 
appeared like gnashing and thumping, on coming nearer was 
found to be the voice of disputants. The men, in one of his 
visions, seen in heavenly light, appeared like dragons, and 
seemed in darkness : but, to each other, they appeared as 
men, and when the light from Heaven shone into their cabin, 
they complained of the darkness, and were compelled to shut 
the window that they might see. 

There was this perception in him, which makes the poet or 
seer an object of awe and terror, namely, that the same man, 
or society of men, may wear one aspect to themselves and 
their companions, and a different aspect to higher intelligences. 
Certain priests, whom he describes as conversing very learned¬ 
ly together, appeared to the children, who were at some dis¬ 
tance, like dead horses ; and many the like inisappearances. i 
And instantly the mind inquires whether these fishes under ! 
the bridge, yonder oxen in the pasture, those dogs in the yard, I 
are immutably fishes, oxen, and dogs, or only so appear to me, I 
and perchance to themselves appear upright men; and wheth- j 
er I appear as a man to all eyes. The Bramins and Pythago -1 
ras propounded the’ same question, and if any poet has wit¬ 
nessed the transformation, he doubtless found it in harmony 
with various experiences. We have all seen changes as con¬ 
siderable in wheat and caterpillars. He is the poet, and shall 
draw us with love and terror, wffio sees, through the flowing 
vest, the firm nature, and can declare it. 

I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not, 


432 


THE POET. 


with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address 
ourselves to life, nor dare we chant our own times and social 
circumstance. If we filled the day with bravery, we should 
not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield us 
many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the 
reconciler, whom all things await. Dante’s praise is, that he 
dared to write his autobiography in colossal cipher, or into 
universality. We have yet had no genius in America, with 
tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable ma¬ 
terials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the 
times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so 
much admires in Homer; then in the middle age ; then in 
Calvinism. Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, 
Methodism and Unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull people, 
but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy, 
and the temple of Delphos, and are as swiftly passing away. 

Our log-rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, 
our Negroes, and Indians, our boats, and our repudiations, the 
wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the 
Northern trade, the Southern planting, the Western clearing, 
Oregon and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem in 
our eyes ; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it 
will not wait long for metres. If I have not found that excel¬ 
lent combination of gifts in my countrymen which I seek, nei¬ 
ther could I aid myself to fix the idea of the poet by reading 
now and then in Chalmers’s collection of five centuries of Eng¬ 
lish poets. These are wits, more than poets, though there 
have been poets among them. But when we adhere to the 
ideal of the poet, we have our difficulties even with Milton 
and Homer. Milton is too literary, and Homer too literal and 
historical. 

But I am not wise enough for a national criticism, and must 
use the old largeness a little longer, to discharge my errand 
from the muse to the poet concerning his art. 

Art is the path of the creator to his work. The paths, or 
methods, are ideal and eternal, though few men ever see them, 
not the artist himself for j^ears, or for a lifetime, unless he 
come into the conditions. The painter, the sculptor, the com¬ 
poser, the epic rhapsodist, the orator, all partake one desire, 
namely, to express themselves symmetrically and abundantly, 
not dwarfishly and fragmentarily. They found or put them¬ 
selves in certain conditions, as, the painter and sculptor be¬ 
fore some impressive human figures; the orator, into the as- 


THE POET. 


433 


sembly of the people; and the others, in such scenes as each 
has found exciting to his intellect; and each presently feels 
the new desire. He hears a voice, he sees a beckoning. Then 
he is apprised, with wonder, what herds of demons hem him 
in. He can no more rest; he says, with the old painter, “ By 
God, it is in me, and must come forth of me.” He pursues a 
beauty, half seen, which flies before him.- The poet pours out 
verses in every solitude. Most of the things he says are con¬ 
ventional, no doubt; but by and by he says something which 
is original and beautiful. That charms him. He would say 
nothing else but such things. In our way of talking, we say, 
‘ That is yours, this is mine ’; but the poet knows well that it 
is not his; that it is as strange and beautiful to him as to 
you ; he would fain hear the like eloquence at length. Once 
having tasted this immortal ichor, he cannot have enough of 
it, and, as an admirable creative power exists in these intellec¬ 
tions, it is of the last importance that these things get spoken. 
What a little of all we know is said ! What drops of all the 
sea of our science are baled up ! and by what accident it is 
that these are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature ! 
Hence the necessity of speech and song; hence these throbs 
and heart-beatings in the orator, at the door of the assembly, 
to the end, namely, that thought may be ejaculated as Logos, 
or Word. 

Doubt not, 0 poet, but persist. Say, 1 It is in me, and shall 
out.’ Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammer¬ 
ing, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage 
draw out of thee that dream -power which every night shows 
thee is thine own ; a power transcending all limit and privacy, 
and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole 
river of electricity. Nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, or 
exists, which must not in turn arise and walk before him as 
exponent of his meaning. Comes he to that power, his genius 
is no longer exhaustible. All the creatures, by pairs and by 
tribes, pour into his mind as into a Noah’s ark, to come forth 
again to people a new world. This is like the stock of air, for 
our respiration, or for the combustion of our fireplace, not a 
measure of gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. And 
therefore the rich poets, as Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and 
Raphael, have obviously no limits to their works, except the 
limits of their lifetime, and resemble a mirror carried through 
the street, ready to render an image of every created thing. 

0 poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, 

VOL. I. 19 BB 


434 


THE POET. 


and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer. The 
conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, 
and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer 
the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but 
shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is tolled 
from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal 
hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, 
and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou abdi¬ 
cate a duplex and manifold life, and that thou be content that 
others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen, and 
shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee ; others 
shall do the great and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie 
close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol 
or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and ap¬ 
prenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool, and 
a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in 
which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt 
be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with 
tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse the 
names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the 
holy ideal. And this is the reward : that the ideal shall be 
real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall 
like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulner¬ 
able essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and 
manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and 
without envy ; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own ; and 
thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and 
boarders. Thou true land-lord ! sea-lord ! air-lord ! Wherever 
snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night 
meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, 
or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent bound¬ 
aries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is dan¬ 
ger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, 
shed for thee, and though thou shouldst walk the world over, 
thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or 
ignoble. 


EXPERIENCE. 


The lords of life, the lords of life, — 

I saw them pass, 

In their own guise, 

Like and unlike, 

Portly and grim, 

Use and Surprise, 

Surface and Dream, 

Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, 
Temperament without a tongue, 

And the inventor of the game 
Omnipresent without name; — 

Some to see, some to be guessed, 

They marched from east to west: 

Little man, least of all, 

Among the legs of his guardians tall, 
Walked about with puzzled look; — 
Him by the hand dear Nature took; 
Dearest Nature, strong and kind, 
Whispered, ‘ Darling, never mind! 
To-morrow they will wear another face, 
The founder thou! these are thy race! * 







- 
















EXPERIENCE. 



HERE do we find ourselves 1 In a series of which we 


do not know the extremes, and believe that it has 


none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are 
stairs below us which we seem to have ascended; there are 
stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of 
sight. But the Genius which, according to the old belief, 
stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe 
to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strong¬ 
ly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. 
Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers 
all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and 
glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. 
Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our 
place again. Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and 
frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so 
liberal of her earth, that it appears to us that we lack the af¬ 
firmative principle, and though we have health and reason, yet 
we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation 1 We have 
enough to live and bring the year about, but not an ounce to 
impart or to invest. Ah that our Genius were a little more of a 
genius! We are like millers on the lower levels of a stream, 
when the factories above them have exhausted the water. 
We too fancy that the upper people must have raised their 


dams. 


If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are go¬ 
ing, then when we think we best know ! We do not know to¬ 
day whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought 
ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much 
was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days 
are so uncomfortable while they pass, that ’t is wonderful 
where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wis- 



438 


EXPERIENCE. 


dom, poetry, virtue. We never got it oil any dated calendar 
day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated some¬ 
where, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, 
that Osiris might be born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked 
mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic ob¬ 
ject, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits 
our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our 
life looks trivial and we shun to record it. Men seem to have 
learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and ref¬ 
erence. ‘ Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my neigh¬ 
bor has fertile meadow, but my field,’ says the querulous far¬ 
mer, ‘ only holds the world together.’ I quote another man’s 
saying; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same 
way, and quotes me. ’T is the trick of nature thus to degrade 
to-day; a good deal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped 
magically in. Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is 
lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard- 
eyed husbands, and deluges of lethe, and the men ask, ‘ What 
’s the news V as if the old were so bad. How many individu¬ 
als can we count in society 1 how many actions 1 how many 
opinions 1 So much of our time is preparation, so much is 
routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man’s 
genius contracts itself to a very few hours. The history of lit¬ 
erature, — take the net result of Tiraboschi, Wart.on, or Schle- 
gel, — is a sum of very few ideas, and of very few original 
tales, — all the rest being variation of these. So, in this great 
society wide lying around us, a critical analysis w r ould find 
very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross 
sense. There are even few opinions, and these seem organic 
in the speakers, and do not disturb the universal necessity. 

What opium is instilled into all disaster! It shows formi¬ 
dable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping 
friction, but the most slippery sliding surfaces : we fall soft on 
a thought : Ante Dea is gentle, 

“ Over men’s heads walking aloft, 

With tender feet treading so soft.” 

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so 
bad with them as they say. There are moods in which we 
court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find 
reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to 
be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has 
taught me, is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the 
rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into 


EXPERIENCE. 


439 


the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the 
costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found 
out that bodies never come in contact! Well, souls never 
touch their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent 
waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. 
Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, 
now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful 
estate, — no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If to-mor¬ 
row I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal 
debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconven¬ 
ience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me 
as it found me, — neither better nor worse. So is it with 
this calamity : it does not touch me ; something which I fan¬ 
cied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without 
tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from 
me and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief 
can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. 
The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should 
not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is 
a type of us all. The dearest events are summer rain, and we 
the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now 
but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, 
there at least is reality that will not dodge us. 

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which 
lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hard¬ 
est, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. Na¬ 
ture does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be 
her fools and playmates. We may have the sphere for our 
cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy. Direct strokes 
she never gave us power to make ; all our blows glance, all 
our hits are accidents. Our relations to each other are oblique 
and casual. 

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. 
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we 
pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses 
which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only 
what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the 
mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what 
we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see 
them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall 
see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, 
and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene 


440 


EXPERIENCE. 


that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less de¬ 
pends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron 
wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or 
talent to a cold and. defective nature 1 Who cares what sensibili¬ 
ty or discrimination a man has at sometime shown, if he falls 
asleep in his chair 1 or if he laugh and giggle 1 or if he apologize 'l 
or is infected with egotism 1 or thinks of his dollar ? or cannot 
pass by food ? or has gotten a child in his boyhood h Of what 
use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave, and 
cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of hu¬ 
man life 1 Of what use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, 
and the man does not care enough for results, to stimulate 
him to experiment, and hold him up in it ? or if the web is 
too finely woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so that 
life stagnates from too much reception, without due outlet 1 ? 
Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same 
old law-breaker is to keep them 1 What cheer can the re¬ 
ligious sentiment yield, when that is suspected to be secretly 
dependent on the seasons of the year, and the state of the 
blood 1 I knew a witty physician who found the creed in 
the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease 
in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ 
was sound, he became a Unitarian. Very mortifying is the 
reluctant experience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility 
neutralizes the promise of genius. We see young men who 
owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but 
they never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the 
account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd. 

Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions, 
and shuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot see. There 
is an optical illusion about every person we meet. In truth, 
they are all creatures of given temperament, which will appear 
in a given character, whose boundaries they will never pass : 
but we look at them, they seem alive, and we presume there is 
impulse in them. In the moment it seems impulse; in the 
year, in the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform tune 
which the revolving barrel of the music-box must play. Men 
resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it as the even¬ 
ing wears on, that temper prevails over everything of time, 
place, and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of re¬ 
ligion. Some modifications the. moral sentiment avails to 
impose, but the individual texture holds its dominion, if not 
to bias the moral judgments, yet to fix the measure of activity 
and of enjoyment. 


EXPERIENCE. 


441 


I thus express the law as it is read from the platform of 
ordinary life, but must not leave it without noticing the capital 
exception. For temperament is a power which no man willing¬ 
ly hears any one praise but himself. On the platform of 
physics, we cannot resist the contracting influences of so-called 
science. Temperament puts all divinity to rout. I know the 
mental proclivity of physicians. I hear the chuckle of the 
phrenologists. Theoretic kidnappers and slave-drivers, they 
esteem each man the victim of another, who winds him round 
his finger by knowing the law of his being, and by such cheap 
sign-boards as the color of his beard, or the slope of his occiput, 
reads the inventory of his fortunes and character. The gross¬ 
est ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness. 
The physicians say, they are not materialists : but they are : 

— Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness : 0 so thin ! 

— But the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its 
ovm evidence. What notions do they attach to love 1 what to 
religion ? One would not willingly pronounce these words in 
their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them. I 
saw a gracious gentleman who adapts his conversation to the 
form of the head of the man he talks with! I had fancied 
that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities; in the 
fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individu¬ 
al, what may befall me. I carry the keys of my castle in my 
hand, ready to throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever 
and in what disguise soever he shall appear. I know he is in 
the neighborhood hidden among vagabonds. Shall I preclude 
my future, by taking a high seat, and kindly adapting my con¬ 
versation to the shape of heads 1 When I come to that, the 
doctors shall buy me for a cent. — 4 But, sir, medical history ; 
the report to the Institute ; the proven facts ! ’ — I distrust 
the facts and the inferences. Temperament is the veto or 
limitation-power in the constitution, very justly applied to 
restrain an opposite excess in the constitution, but absurdly 
offered as a bar to original equity. When virtue is in presence, 
all subordinate powers sleep. On its own level, or in view of 
nature, temperament is final. I see not, if one be once caught 
in this trap of so-called sciences, any escape for the man from 
the links of the chain of physical necessity. Given such an 
embryo, such a history must follow. On this platform, one 
lives in a sty of sensualism, and would soon come to suicide. 
But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude 
itself. Into every intelligence there is a door ’which is never 

19 # 


442 


EXPERIENCE. 


closed, through which the creator passes. The intellect, 
seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover of absolute good, 
intervenes for our succor, and at one whisper of these high 
powers, we awake from ineffectual struggles with this night¬ 
mare. We hurl it into its own hell, and cannot again con¬ 
tract ourselves to so base a state. 

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a suc¬ 
cession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but 
the anchorage is quicksand. This onward trick of nature is 
too strong for us : Pero si muove. When, at night, I look at 
the moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to hurry. 
Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of 
body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or 
facility of association. We need change of objects. Dedica¬ 
tion to one thought is quickly odious. We house with the 
insane, and must humor them; then conversation dies out. 
Once I took such delight in Montaigne, that I thought I 
should not need any other book; before that, in Shakespeare; 
then in Plutarch; then in Plotinus; at one time in Bacon ; 
afterwards in Goethe ; even in Bettine; but now I turn the 
pages of either of them languidly, whilst I still cherish their 
genius. So with pictures ; each will bear an emphasis of at¬ 
tention once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would 
continue to be pleased in that maimer. How strongly I have 
felt of pictures, that when you have seen one well, you must 
take your leave of it; you shall never see it again. I have 
had good lessons from pictures, which I have since seen with¬ 
out emotion or remark. A deduction must be made from the 
opinion, which even the wise express on a new book or oc¬ 
currence. Their opinion gives me tidings of their mood, and 
some vague guess at the new fact, but is nowise to be trusted 
as the lasting relation between that intellect and that thing. 
The child asks, * Mamma, why don’t I like the story as well as 
when you told it me yesterday 1 ’ Alas, child, it is even so 
•with the oldest cherubim of knowledge. But will it answer 
thy question to say, Because thou wert. born to a whole, and 
this story is a particular 1 The reason of the pain this dis¬ 
covery causes us (and we make it late in respect to works of 
arts and intellect), is the plaint of tragedy which murmurs 
from it in regard to persons, to friendship and love. 

That immobility and absence of elasticity which we find in 
the arts, we find with more pain in the artist. There is no power 


EXPERIENCE. 


443 


of expansion in men. Our friends early appear to us as rep¬ 
resentatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. 
They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, 
but they never take the single step that would bring them 
there. A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no 
lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a par¬ 
ticular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There 
is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each 
has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men con¬ 
sists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn 
shall be oftenest to be practised. We do what we must, and 
call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the 
praise of having intended the result which ensues. I cannot 
recall any form of man who is not superfluous sometimes. But 
is not this pitiful 1 Life is not worth the taking, to do tricks in. 

Of course, it needs the whole society, to give the symmetry 
we seek. The party-colored wheel must revolve very fast to 
appear white. Something is learned too by conversing with 
so much folly and defect. In fine, whoever loses, we are al¬ 
ways of the gaining party. Divinity is behind our failures 
and follies also. The plays of children are nonsense, but very 
educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest 
things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so 
with the history of every man’s bread, and the ways by which 
he is to come by it. Like a bird which alights nowhere, but 
hops perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power which 
abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks 
from this one, and for another moment from that one. 

But what help from these fineries or pedantries ? What 
help from thought 1 Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in 
these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criti¬ 
cism. Our young people have thought and written much on 
labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither 
the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual 
tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man 
should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread 
down his throat, he would starve. At Education Farm, the 
noblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men 
and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would not 
rake or pitch a ton of hay 1 it would not rub down a horse ; 
and the men and maidens it left pale and hungry. A po¬ 
litical orator wuttily compared our party promises to Western 


444 


EXPERIENCE. 


roads, which opened stately enough, with planted trees on 
either side, to tempt the traveller, but soon became narrower 
and narrower and ended in a squirrel-track, and ran up a tree. 
So does culture with us; it ends in headache. Unspeakably 
sad and barren does life look to those, who a few months ago 
were dazzled with the splendor of the promise of the times. 
“ There is now no longer any right course of action, nor any 
self-devotion left among the Iranis.” Objections and criticism 
we have had our fill of. There are objections to every course 
of life and action, and the practical wisdom infers an indiffer~ 
ency, from the omnipresence of objection. The whole frame 
of things preaches indifferency. Do not craze yourself with 
thinking, but go about your business anywhere. Life is not 
intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well- 
mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question. 
Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her very sense 
when they say, “ Children, eat your victuals, and say no more 
of it.” To fill the hour, — that is happiness ; to fill the hour, 
and leave no crevice for a repentance of an approval. We live 
amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them. 
Under the oldest mouldiest conventions, a man of native 
force prospers just as well as in the newest world, and that by 
skill of handling and treatment. He can take hold anywhere. 
Life itself is a mixture of power and form, and will not bear 
the least excess of either. To finish the moment, to find the 
journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest 
number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, 
but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, 
the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether 
for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting 
high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them. 
Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as five min¬ 
utes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and 
our own, to-day. Let us treat the men and women well: treat 
them as if they were real : perhaps they are. Men live in 
their fancy, like drunkards whose hands are too soft and trem¬ 
ulous for successful labor. It is a tempest of fancies, and the 
only ballast I know is a respect to the present hour. With¬ 
out any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of shows and 
politics, I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we 
should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice 
where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our 
actual companions and circumstances, however humble or 


EXPERIENCE. 


445 


odious, as the mystic officials to whom the universe has dele¬ 
gated its-whole pleasure for us. If these are mean and ma¬ 
lignant, their contentment, which is the last victory of justice, 
is a more satisfying echo to the heart than the voice of poets 
and the casual sympathy of admirable persons. I think that, 
however a thoughtful man may suffer from the defects and 
absurdities of his company, he cannot without affectation deny 
to any set of men and women a sensibility to extraordinary 
merit. The coarse and frivolous have an instinct of superiori¬ 
ty, if they have not a sympathy, and honor it in their blind 
capricious way with sincere homage. 

The fine young people despise life, but in me, and in such as 
with me are free from dyspepsia, and to whom a day is a sound 
and solid good, it is a great excess of politeness to look scorn¬ 
ful and to cry for company. I am grown by sympathy a little 
eager and sentimental, but leave me alone, and I should relish 
every hour and what it brought me, the potluck of the day, as 
heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room. I am thankful 
for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends 
who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed 
when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin 
at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full 
of thanks for moderate goods. I accept the clangor and jangle 
of contrary tendencies. I find my account in sots and bores 
also. They give a reality to the circumjacent picture, which 
such a vanishing meteorous appearance can ill spare. In the 
morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes, and 
mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and 
even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good 
we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. 
The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is 
on the highway. The middle region of our being is the tem¬ 
perate zone. We may climb into the thin and cold realm of 
pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensa¬ 
tion. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, 
of spirit, of poetry, — a narrow belt. Moreover, in popular 
experience, everything good is on the highway. A. collector 
peeps into all the picture-shops of Europe, for a landscape of 
Poussin, a crayon sketch of Salvator; but the Transfiguration, 
the Last Judgment, the Communion of St. Jerome, and vhat 
are as transcendent as these, are on the walls of the Vatican, 
the Uffizii, or the Louvre, where every footman may see them; 
to say nothing of nature’s pictures in every street, of sunsets 


446 


EXPERIENCE. 


and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the human body 
never absent. A collector recently bought at public auction, 
in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an auto¬ 
graph of Shakespeare : but for nothing a school-boy can read 
Hamlet, and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet un¬ 
published therein. I think I will never read any but the com¬ 
monest books, — the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and 
Milton. Then we are impatient of so public a life and planet, 
and run hither and thither for nooks and secrets. The imagina¬ 
tion delights in the wood-craft of Indians, trappers, and bee- 
hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately 
domesticated in the planet as the wild man, and the wild 
beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also ; reaches 
the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. 
Fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe, and bittern, when nearly 
seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are 
just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new 
molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt 
atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside : it has no 
inside. 

The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know her, is no 
saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos and 
corn-eaters, she does not distinguish by any favor. She 
comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, the 
great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, 
do not come out of the Sunday school, nor weigh their food, 
nor punctually keep the commandments. If we will be strong 
with her strength, we must not harbor such disconsolate con¬ 
sciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other nations. 
We must set up the strong present tense against all the 
rumors of wrath, past or to come. So many things are un¬ 
settled which it is of the first importance to settle, — and 
pending their settlement, we will do as we do. Whilst the 
debate goes forward on the equitv of commerce, and will not 
be closed for a century or two, New and Old England may 
keep shop. Law of copyright and international copyright is 
to be discussed, and, in the interim, we will sell our books 
for the most we can. Expediency of literature, reason of 
literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is ques¬ 
tioned ; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight 
waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add 
a line every hour, and between whiles add a line. Rioht to 
hold land, right of property, is disputed, and the conventions 


EXPERIENCE. 


447 


convene, and before the vote is taken, dig away in your gar¬ 
den, and spend your earnings as a waif or godsend to all 
serene and beautiful purposes. Life itself is a bubble and a 
scepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and as much 
more as they will, — but thou, God’s darling ! heed thy private 
dream : thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and scepti¬ 
cism : there are enough of them : stay there in thy closet, 
and toil, until the rest are agreed what to do about it. Thy 
sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require that thou do 
this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a 
tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. 
Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which 
holds thee dear, shall be the better. 

Human life is made up of the two elements, power and 
form, and the proportion must be invariably kept, if we would 
have it sweet and sound. Each of these elements in excess 
makes a mischief as hurtful as its defect. Everything runs 
to excess : every good quality is noxious, if unmixed, and, to 
carry the danger to the edge of ruin, nature causes each 
man’s peculiarity to superabound. Here, among the farms, 
we adduce the scholars as examples of this treachery. They 
are nature’s victims of expression. You who see the artist, 
the orator, the poet, too near, and find their life no more ex¬ 
cellent than that of mechanics or farmers, and themselves 
victims of partiality, very hollow and haggard, and pronounce 
them failures,—not heroes, but quacks, — conclude very rea¬ 
sonably, that these arts are not for man, but are disease. Yet 
nature will not bear you out. Irresistible nature made men 
such, and makes legions more of such, every day. You love 
the boy reading in a book, gazing at a drawing, or a cast: yet 
what are these millions who read and behold, but incipient 
writers and sculptors 1 Add a little more of that quality 
which now reads and sees, and they will seize the pen and 
chisel. And if one remembers how innocently he began to 
be an artist, he perceives that nature joined with his enemy. 
A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is 
a hair’s breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made 
a fool. 

How easily, if fate would suffer it, w'e might keep forever 
these beautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, once for all, to the 
perfect calculation of the kingdom of known cause and effect. 
In the street, and in the newspapers, life appears so plain a 


448 


EXPERIENCE. 


business, that manly resolution and adherence to the multipli¬ 
cation-table through all weathers, will insure success. But ah ! 
presently comes a day, or is it only a half-hour, with its angel- 
whispering, — which discomfits the conclusions of nations and 
of years ! To-morrow again, everything looks real and angu¬ 
lar, the habitual standards are reinstated, common sense is as 
rare as genius, — is the basis of genius, and experience is 
hands and feet to every enterprise ; — and yet, he who should 
do his business on this understanding, would be quickly bank¬ 
rupt. Power keeps quite another road than the turnpikes of 
choice and will, namely, the subterranean and invisible tun¬ 
nels and channels of life. It is ridiculous that we are diplo¬ 
matists, and doctors, and considerate people; there are no 
dupes like these. Life is a series of surprises, and would not 
be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to 
isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future. 
We would look about us, but with grand politeness he draws 
down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and 
another behind us of purest sky. ‘ You will not remember,’ 
he seems to say, 1 and you will not expect.’ All good conver¬ 
sation, manners, and action, come from a spontaneity which for¬ 
gets usages, and makes the moment great. Nature hates calcu¬ 
lators ; her methods are saltatory and impulsive. Man lives by 
pulses ; our organic movements are such ; and the chemical and 
ethereal agents are undulatory and alternate ; and the mind 
goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but by fits. We 
thrive by casualties. Our chief experiences have been casual. 
The most attractive class of people are those who are power¬ 
ful obliquely, and not by the direct stroke : men of genius, 
but not yet accredited : one gets the cheer of their light with¬ 
out paying too great a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the bird, 
or the morning light, and not of art. In the thought of 
genius there is always a surprise ; and the moral sentiment is 
well called “ the newness,” for it is never other; as new to the 
oldest intelligence as to the young child, — “ the kingdom that 
cometh without observation.” In like manner, for practical 
success, there must not be too much design. A man will not 
be observed in doing that which he can do best. There is a 
certain magic about his properest action, which stupefies your 
powers of observation, so that though it is done before you, 
you wist not of it. The art of life has a pudency, and will 
not be exposed. Every man is an impossibility, until he is 
born; every thing impossible, until we see a success. The 


EXPERIENCE. 


449 


ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest scepticism, — 
that nothing is of us or our works, — that all is of God. Na¬ 
ture will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. All writing 
comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I would 
gladly be moral, and keep due metes and bounds, which 
I dearly love, and allow the most to the will of man, but I 
have set my heart on honesty in this chapter, and I can see 
nothing at last, in success or failure, than more or less of vital 
force supplied from the Eternal. The results of life are un¬ 
calculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the 
days never know. The persons who compose our company, 
converse, and come and go, and design and execute many 
things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked-for re¬ 
sult. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many 
things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with 
some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are 
a little advanced, but the individual is always, mistaken. It 
turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised 
himself. 

The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the ele¬ 
ments of human life to calculation, exalted Chance into a 
divinity, but that is to stay too long at the spark, — which 
glitters truly at one point, — but the universe is warm with 
the latency of the same fire. The miracle of life which will 
not be expounded, but will remain a miracle, introduces a new 
element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir Everard Home, 
I think, noticed that the evolution was not from one central 
point, but coactive from three or more points. Life has no 
memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remem¬ 
bered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper 
cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own ten¬ 
dency. So is it with us, now sceptical, or without unity, be¬ 
cause immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal 
yet hostile value, and now religious, whilst in the reception of 
spiritual law. Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous 
growth of the parts ; they will one day be members , and obey 
one will. On that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our 
attention and hope. Life is hereby melted into an expectation 
or a religion. Underneath the inharmonious and trivial par¬ 
ticulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always 
with us, the heaven without rent or seam. Do but observe 
the mode of our illumination. When I converse with a pro- 


450 


EXPERIENCE. 


found mind, or if at any time being alone I have good thoughts, 
I do not at once arrive at satisfactions, as when, being thirsty, 
I drink water, or go to the fire, being cold : no ! but I am at 
first apprised of my vicinity to a new and excellent region of 
life. By persisting to read or to think, this region gives fur¬ 
ther sign of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden dis¬ 
coveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds 
that covered it parted at intervals, and showed the approach¬ 
ing traveller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal 
meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and shep¬ 
herds pipe and dance. But every insight from this realm of 
thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not 
make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. 
I make ! 0 no ! I clap my hands in infinite joy and amaze¬ 

ment, before the first opening to me of this august magnifi¬ 
cence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, 
young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert. 
And what a future it opens ! I feel a new heart beating with 
the love of the new beauty. I am ready to die out of nature, 
and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America 
I have found in the West. 

“ Since neither now nor yesterday began 
These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can 
A man be found who their first entrance knew.” 

If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must now add, 
that there is that in us which changes not, and which ranks all 
sensations and states of mind. The consciousness in each 
man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First 
Cause, and now with the flesh of his body ; life above life, in 
infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung deter¬ 
mines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not, 
what you have done or forborne, but, at whose command you 
have done or forborne it. 

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — these are quaint 
names, too narrow to cover this unbounded substance. The 
baffled intellect must still kneel before this cause, which re¬ 
fuses to be named, — ineffable cause, which every fine genius 
has essayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as Thales 
by water, Anaximenes by air, Anaxagoras by (Nous) thought, 
Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the moderns by love : and the met¬ 
aphor of each has become a national religion. The Chinese 
Mencius has not been the least successful in his generalization. 
“ I fully understand language,” he said, “ and nourish well my 


EXPERIENCE. 


451 


vast-flowing vigor.” — “ I beg to ask what you call vast¬ 
flowing vigor 1 ” said his companion. “ The explanation,” 
replied Mencius, “ is difficult. This vigor is supremely great, 
and in the highest degree unbending. ' Nourish it correctly* 
and do it no injury, and it will fill up the vacancy between 
heaven and earth. This vigor accords with and assists justice 
and reason, and leaves no hunger.” In our more correct 
writing, we give to this generalization the name of Being, and 
thereby confess that we have arrived as far as we can go. Suf¬ 
fice it for the joy of the universe, that we have not arrived at 
a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems not present, 
so much as prospective ; not for the affairs on which it is 
wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor. Most of life 
seems to be mere advertisement of faculty; information is given 
us not to sell ourselves cheap ; that we are very great. So, in 
particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, 
not in an action. It is for us to believe in the rule, not in the 
exception. The noble are thus known from the ignoble. So 
in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we 
believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but 
the universal impulse to believe , that is the material circum¬ 
stance, and is the principal fact in the history of the globe. 
Shall we describe this cause as that which works directly % 
The spirit is not helpless or needful of mediate organs. It has 
plentiful powers and direct effects. I am explained without 
explaining, I am felt without acting, and where I am not. 
Therefore all just persons are satisfied w ith their ow n praise. 
They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new 
actions should do them that office. They believe that we com¬ 
municate without speech, and above speech, and that no right 
action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever 
distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by 
miles. Why should I fret myself, because a circumstance has 
occurred, which hinders my presence where I was expected 1 
If I am not at the meeting, my presence where I am should 
be as useful to the commonwealth of friendship and wisdom, 
as would be my presence in that place. I exert the same 
quality of power in all places. Thus journeys the mighty 
Ideal before us; it never was known to fall into the rear. No 
man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his 
good is tidings of a better. Onward and onward ! In liber¬ 
ated moments, we know that a new picture of life and duty is 
already possible ; the elements already exist in many minds 


452 


EXPERIENCE. 


around you, of a doctrine of life which shall transcend any 
written record we have. The new statement will comprise the 
scepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs 
a creed shall be formed. For, scepticisms are not gratuitous 
or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, 
and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirma¬ 
tions outside of them, just as much as it must include the old¬ 
est beliefs. 

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery 
we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the 
Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. 
We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, 
and that we have no means of correcting these colored and 
distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of 
their errors. Perhaps these subject lenses have a creative pow¬ 
er ; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we 
saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threat¬ 
ens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, let¬ 
ters, religions, — objects, successively tumble in, and God is 
but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phe¬ 
nomena ; every evil and every good thing is a shadow "which we 
cast. The street is full of humiliations to the proud. As the 
fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery, and make them 
wait on his guests at table, so the chagrins which the bad 
heart gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gen¬ 
tlemen in the street, shopmen or bar-keepers in hotels, and 
threaten or insult whatever is threatenable and insultable in us. 
’T is the same with our idolatries. People forget that it is the 
eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind’s eye 
which makes this or that man a type or representative of hu¬ 
manity with the name of hero or saint. Jesus, “ the provi¬ 
dential man,” is a good man on whom many people are agreed 
that these optical laws shall take effect. By love on one part, 
and by forbearance to press objection on the other part, it is 
for a time settled, that we will look at him in the centre of 
the horizon, and ascribe to him the properties that will attach 
to any man so seen. But the longest love or aversion has a 
speedy term. The great and crescive self, rooted in absolute 
nature, supplants all relative existence, and ruins the kingdom 
of mortal friendship and love. Marriage (in what is called 
the spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality 
between every subject and every object. The subject is the re- 


EXPERIENCE. 


453 


ceiver of Godhead, and at every comparison must feel his being 
enhanced by that cryptic might. Though not in energy, yet 
by presence, this magazine of substance cannot be otherwise 
than felt: nor can any force of intellect attribute to the object 
the proper deity which sleeps or wakes forever in every subject. 
Never can love make consciousness and ascription equal in 
force. There will be the same gulf between every me and 
thee, as between the original and the picture. The universe 
is the bride of the soul. All private sympathy is partial. 
Two human beings are like globes which can touch only in 
a point, and, whilst they remain in contact, all other points 
of each of the spheres are inert; their turn must also come, 
and the longer a particular union lasts, the more energy of ap¬ 
petency the parts not in union acquire. 

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor doubled. 
Any invasion of its unity would be chaos. The soul is not 
twin-born, but the only begotten, and though revealing itself 
as child in time, child in appearance, is of a fatal and univer¬ 
sal power, admitting no co-life. Every day, every act betrays 
the ill-concealed deity. We believe in ourselves, as we do not 
believe in others. We permit all things to ourselves, and that 
which we call sin in others is experiment for us. It is an in¬ 
stance of our faith in ourselves, that men never speak of crime 
as lightly as they think : or, every man thinks a latitude safe 
for himself, wdiich is nowise to be indulged to another. The 
act looks very differently on the inside, and on the outside ; in 
its quality, and in its consequences. Murder in the murderer 
is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; 
it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice 
of trifles : it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its 
sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of 
ail relations. Especially the crimes that spring from love, 
seem right and fair from the actor’s point of view, but, when 
acted, are found destructive of society. No man at last believes 
that he can be lost, nor that the crime in him is as black as in 
the felon. Because the intellect qualifies in our own case the 
moral judgments. For there is no crime to the intellect. 
That is antinomian or hypernomian, and judges law as well as 
fact. “ It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder,” said Napo¬ 
leon, speaking the language of the intellect. To it, the world 
is a problem in mathematics or the science of quantity, and it 
leaves out praise and blame, and all weak emotions. All 
stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who 


454 


EXPERIENCE. 


does not steal 1 Saints are sad, because they behold sin (even 
when they speculate), from the point of view of the conscience, 
and not of the intellect; a confusion of thought. Sin seen 
from the thought is a diminution or less: seen from the con¬ 
science or will, it is pravity or bad. The intellect names its 
shade, absence of light, and no essence. The conscience must 
feel it as essence, essential evil. This it is not: it has an ob¬ 
jective existence, but no subjective. 

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every 
object fair successively into the subject itself. The subject 
exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall 
into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we 
can never see anything but what we are; Hermes, Cadmus, 
Columbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are the mind’s ministers. In¬ 
stead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let 
us treat the new-comer like a travelling geologist, who passes 
through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or 
anthracite, in our brush pasture. The partial action of each 
strong mind in one direction, is a telescope for the objects on 
which it is pointed. But every other part of knowledge is to 
be pushed to the same extravagance, ere the soul attains her 
due sphericity. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily 
her own tail ? If you could look with her eyes, you might 
see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing com¬ 
plex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, 
many characters, many ups and downs of fate, — and mean¬ 
time it is only puss and her tail. How long before our mas¬ 
querade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and shout¬ 
ing, and we shall find it was a solitary performance 1 — A 
subject and an object, — it takes so much to make the gal¬ 
vanic circuit complete, but magnitude adds nothing. What 
imports it whether it is Kepler and the sphere; Columbus 
and America ; a reader and his book; or puss with her tail 1 

It is true that all the muses and love and religion hate 
these developments, and will find a way to punish the chem¬ 
ist, who publishes in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. 
And we cannot say too little of our constitutional necessity of 
seeing things under private aspects, or saturated with our 
humors. And yet is the God the native of these bleak rocks. 
That need makes in morals the capital virtue of self-trust. 
We must hold hard to this poverty, however scandalous, and 
by more vigorous self-recoveries, after the sallies of action, 
possess our axis more firmly. The life of truth is cold, and 


EXPERIENCE. 


455 


so far mournful; but it is not the slave of tears, contritions, 
and perturbations. It does not attempt another’s work, nor 
adopt another’s facts. It is a main lesson of wisdom to know 
your own from another’s. I have learned that I cannot dis¬ 
pose of other people’s facts; but I possess such a key to my 
own, as persuades me against all their denials, that they also 
have a key to theirs. A sympathetic person is placed in the 
dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch 
at him, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger, they will 
drown him. They wish to be saved from the mischiefs of 
their vices, but not from their vices. Charity would be wasted 
on this poor waiting on the symptoms. A wise and hardy 
physician will say, Come out of that , as the first condition of 
advice. 

In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good¬ 
nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes 
away the power of being greatly useful. A man should not 
be able to look other than directly and forthright. A pre¬ 
occupied attention is the only answer to the importunate 
frivolity of other people; an attention, and to an aim which 
makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, and 
leaves no appeal, and no hard thoughts. In Flaxman’s draw¬ 
ing of the Eumenides of Aeschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, 
whilst the Furies sleep on the threshold. The face of the god 
expresses a shade of regret and compassion, but calm with the 
conviction of the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. He 
is born into other politics, into the eternal and beautiful. The 
man at his feet asks for his interest in turmoils of the earth, 
into which his nature cannot enter. And the Eumenides 
there lying express pictorially this disparity. The god is sur¬ 
charged with his divine destiny. 

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Real¬ 
ity, Subjectiveness,—these are threads on the loom of time, 
these are the lords of life. I dare not assume to give their 
order, but I name them as I find them in my "way. I know 
better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I am 
a fragment, and this is a fragment of me. I can very con¬ 
fidently announce one or another law, w T hicli throws itself 
into relief and form, but I am too young yet by some ages to 
compile a code. I gossip for my hour concerning the eternal 
politics. I have seen many fair pictures not in vain. A won¬ 
derful time I have lived in. I am not the novice I was four- 


456 


EXPERIENCE. 


teen, nor yet seven years ago. Let who will ask, where is 
the fruit 1 I find a private fruit sufficient. This is a fruit, 
— that I should not ask for a rash effect from meditations, 
counsels, and the hiving of truths. I should feel it pitiful 
to demand a result on this town and county, an overt effect 
on the instant month and year. The effect is deep and secu¬ 
lar as the cause. It works on periods in which mortal life¬ 
time is lost. All I know is reception; I am and I have : but 
I do not get, and when I have fancied I had gotten anything, 
I found I did not. I worship with wonder the great Fortune. 
My reception has been so large, that I am not annoyed by re¬ 
ceiving this or that superabundantly. I say to the Genius, if 
he will pardon the proverb, In for a mill , in for a million. 
When 1 receive a new gift, I do not macerate my body to 
make the account square, for, if I should die, I could not 
make the account square. The benefit overran the merit the 
first day, and has overran the merit ever since. The merit 
itself, so called, I reckon part of the receiving. 

Also, that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems 
to me an apostasy. In good earnest, I am willing to spare 
this most unnecessary deal of doing. Life wears to me a 
visionary face. Hardest, roughest action is visionary also. It 
is but a choice between soft and turbulent dreams. People 
disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. 
I am very content with knowing, if only I could know. That 
is an august entertainment, and would suffice me a great 
while. To know a little, would be worth the expense of this 
world. I hear always the law of Adrastia, “ that every soul 
which had acquired any truth should be safe from harm until 
another period.” 

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the 
farms is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and 
shall observe it. One day, I shall know the value and law of 
this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained 
by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. 
Many eager persons successively make an experiment in this 
way, and make themselves ridiculous. They acquire demo¬ 
cratic manners, they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. 
Worse, I observe, that in the history of mankind, there is 
never a solitary example of success, — taking their own tests 
of success. I say this polemically, or in reply to the inquiry, 
why not realize your world 1 But far be from me the despair 
which prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism, — since there 


EXPERIENCE. 


457 


never was a right endeavor, but it succeeded. Patience and 
patience, we shall win at the last. We must be very suspicious 
of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good 
deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, 
and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight 
-which becomes the light of our life. We dress our garden, 
eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and 
these things make no impression, are forgotten next week ; 
but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, 
he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into 
new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, 
never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, 
— there is victory yet for all justice ; and the true romance 
which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of 
genius into practical power. 








* 








CHARACTER. 


♦ 


The sun set; but set not his hope: 

Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: 
Fixed on the enormous galaxy, 

Deeper ancl older seemed his eye: 

And matched his sufferance sublime 
The taciturnity of time. 

He spoke, and words more soft than rain 
Brought the Age of Gold again: 

His action won such reverence sweet, 

As hid all measure of the feat. 



Work of his hand 

He nor commends nor grieves 

Pleads for itself the fact; 

As unrepenting Nature leaves 
Her every act. 



CHARACTER. 


I HAVE read that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt 
that there was something finer in the man than anything 
which he said.^It has been complained of our brilliant Eng¬ 
lish historian of the French Revolution, that when he has told 
all his facts about Mirabeau, they do not justify his estimate 
of his genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of 
Plutarch’s heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their own 
fame. Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Ra¬ 
leigh, are men of great figure, and of few deeds. We cannot 
find the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington 
in the narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name 
of Schiller is too great for his books. This inequality of the 
reputation to the works or the anecdotes, is not accounted for 
by saying that the reverberation is longer than the thunder¬ 
clap ; but somewhat resided in these men which begot an ex¬ 
pectation that outran all their performance. The largest part 
of their power was latent.^This is that which we call Charac- | 
ter, — a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and ] 
^without means.// It is conceived of as a certain undemonstra- 
ble force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose impulses the man is 
guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart; which is com¬ 
pany for him, so that such men are often solitary, or if they 
chance to be social, do not need society, but can entertain 
themselves very well alone. The purest literary talent appears 
at one time great, at another time small, but character is of a 
stellar and undiminishable greatness. /- What others effect by 
talent or by eloquence, this man accomplishes by some mag¬ 
netism. “Half his strength he put not forth.” His victories 
are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing of 
bayonets. He conquers, because his arrival alters the face of 
affairs. ‘ “ 0 Iole ! how did you know that Hercules was a 



462 


CHARACTER. 


god ? ” “ Because,” answered Iole, “ I was content the moment 
my eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired that 
I might see him offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the 
chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he con¬ 
quered whether he stood or walked, or sat, or whatever thing 
he did.” ’ Man, ordinarily a pendant to events, only half at¬ 
tached, and that awkwardly, to the world he lives in, in these 
examples appears to share the life of things, and to be an ex¬ 
pression of the same laws which control the tides and the sun, 
numbers and quantities. 

But to use a more modest illustration, and nearer home, I 
observe that in our political elections, where this element, if it 
appears at all, can only occur in its coarsest form, we sufficient¬ 
ly understand its incomparable rate. The people know that 
they need in their representative much more than talent, 
namely, the power to make his talent trusted. They cannot 
come at their ends by sending to Congress a learned, acute, 
and fluent speaker, if he be not one who, before he was ap¬ 
pointed by the people to represent them, was appointed by 
Almighty God to stand for a fact, — invincibly persuaded of 
that fact in himself, — so that the most confident and the 
most violent persons learn that here is resistance on which 
both impudence and terror are wasted, namely, faith in a fact. 
The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their 
constituents what they should say, but are themselves the 
country which they represent : nowhere are its emotions or 
opinions so instant and true as in them • nowhere so pure 
from a selfish infusion. The constituency at home hearkens 
to their words, watches the color of their cheek, and there¬ 
in, as in a glass, dresses its own. Our public assemblies are 
pretty good tests of manly force. Our frank countrymen of 
the West and South have a taste for character, and like to 
know whether the New-Englander is a substantial man, or 
whether the hand can pass through him. 

The same motive force appears in trade. There are geniuses 
in trade, as well as in war, or the state, or letters ; and the 
reason why this or that man is fortunate, is not to be told. It 
lies in the man : that is all anybody can tell you about it. 
See him, and you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if 
you see Napoleon, you would comprehend his fortune. In the 
new objects we recognize the old game, the habit of fronting 
the fact, and not dealing with it at second-hand, through the 
perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, 


CHARACTER. 


463 


as soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears not so 
much a private agent, as her factor and Minister of Com¬ 
merce. His natural probity combines with his insight into the 
fabric of society, to put him above tricks, and he communi¬ 
cates to all his own faith, that contracts are of no private in¬ 
terpretation. The habit of his mind is a reference to stand¬ 
ards of natural equity and public advantage ; and he inspires 
respect, and the wish to deal with him, both for the quiet 
spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectual 
pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords. This 
immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the 
Southern Ocean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his familiar 
port, centres in his brain only ; and nobody in the universe 
can make his place good. In his parlor, I see very well that 
he has been at hard work this morning, with that knitted 
brow, and that settled humor, which all his desire to be cour¬ 
teous cannot shake off. I see plainly how many firm acts 
have been done; how many valiant noes have this day been 
spoken, when others would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, 
with the pride of art, and skill of masterly arithmetic and 
power of remote combination, the consciousness of being an 
agent and playfellow of the original laws of the world. He 
too believes that none can supply him, and that a man must 
be born to trade, or lie cannot learn it. 

This virtue draws the mind more, when it appears in ac¬ 
tion to ends not so mixed. It works with most energy in the 
smallest companies and in private relations. In all cases, it 
is an extraordinary and incomputable agent. The excess of 
physical strength is paralyzed by it. Higher natures over¬ 
power lower ones by affecting them with a certain sleep. The 
faculties are locked up, and offer no resistance. Perhaps that 
is the universal law. When the high cannot bring up the low 
to itself, it benumbs it, as man charms down the resistance 
of the lower animals. Men exert on each other a similar oc¬ 
cult pow r er. How often has the influence of a true master real¬ 
ized all the tales of magic ! A river of command seemed to 
run down from his eyes into all those who beheld him, a tor¬ 
rent of strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, which pervad¬ 
ed them with his thoughts, and colored all events with the hue 
of his mind. “ What means did you employ 1 ” was the ques¬ 
tion asked of the wife of Concini, in regard to her treatment 
of Mary of Medici; and the answer was, “ Only that influence 
which every strong mind has over a weak one.” Cannot 


464 


CHARACTER. 


Caesar in irons shuffle off the irons, and transfer them to the per' 
son of Hippo or Thraso the turnkey 'l Is an iron handcuff so 
immutable a bond 1 Suppose a slaver on the coast of Guinea 
should take on board a gang of negroes, which should contain 
persons of the stamp of Toussaint l'Ouverture : or, let us fan¬ 
cy under these swarthy masks he has a gang of Washingtons 
in chains. When they arrive at Cuba, will the relative order 
of the ship’s company be the same 1 Is there nothing but 
rope and iron ? Is there no love, no reverence 1 Is there 
never a glimpse of right in a poor slave-captain’s mind ; and 
cannot these be supposed available to break, or elude, or in 
any manner overmatch, the tension of an inch or two of iron 

ring? 

This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature 
co-operates with it. • The reason why we feel one man’s pres¬ 
ence, and do not feel another’s, is as simple as gravity. Truth 
is the summit of being ; justice is the application of it to af¬ 
fairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to 
the purity of this element in them. The will of the pure 
runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down 
from a higher into a lower vessel. This natural force is no 
more to be withstood, than any other natural force. We can 
drive a stone upward for a moment into the air, but it is yet 
true that all stones will forever fall; and whatever instances 
can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which some¬ 
body credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of 
truth to make itself believed. Character is this moral order 
seen through the medium of an individual nature^ An in¬ 
dividual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and neces¬ 
sity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer. Now, the 
universe is a close or pound. All things exist in the man 
tinged with the manners of his soul. With what quality is 
in him, he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he 
tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve' so¬ 
ever, all his regards return into his own good at last. He 
animates all he can, and he sees only what he animates. He 
encloses the world, as the patriot does his country, as a mate¬ 
rial basis for his character, and a theatre for action. A healthy 
soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet 
arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders 
like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso 
journeys towards the sun journeys towards that person. He 
is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are 


^ CHARACTER. 465 

not on the same level. Thus, men of character are the con¬ 
science of the society to which they belong. 

/The natural measure of this power is the resistance of 
circumstances. Impure men consider life as it is reflected in 
opinions, events, and persons. They cannot see the action, 
until it is done. Yet its moral element pre-existed in the 
actor, and its quality as right or wrong, it was easy to pre¬ 
dict. Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive and 
negative pole. There is a male and a female, a spirit and a 
fact, a north and a south. Spirit is the positive, the event is 
the negative. Will is the north, action the south pole. Char¬ 
acter may be ranked as having its natural place in the north. 
It shares the magnetic currents of the system. The feeble 
souls are drawn to the south or negative pole. They look at 
the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold a princi¬ 
ple until it is lodged in a person. They do not wish to be’ 
lovely, but to be loved. Men of character like to hear of 
their faults : the other class do not like to hear of faults ; 
they worship events; secure to them a fact, a connection, a 
certain chain of circumstances, and they will ask no more. 
The hero sees that the event is ancillary : it must follow him. 
A given order of events has no power to secure to him the 
satisfaction which the imagination attaches to it; the soul of 
goodness escapes from any set of circumstances, whilst pros¬ 
perity belongs to a certain mind, and will introduce that power 
and victory which is its natural fruit, into any order of events. 
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character. 
We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if 
we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of the 
idolatry. What have I gained, that I no longer immolate a 
bull to Jove, or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do 
tremble before the Eumenidcs, or the Catholic Purgatory, or 
the Calvinistic Judgment-day,—if I quake at opinion, the 
public opinion, as we call it; or at the threat of assault, or 
contumely, or bad neighbors, or poverty, or mutilation, or at 
the rumor of revolution, or of murder 1 If I quake, what 
matters it what I quake at 1 Our proper vice takes form in 
one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or tempera¬ 
ment of the person, and, if We are capable of fear, will readily 
find terrors. The covetousness or the malignity which sad¬ 
dens me, when I ascribe it to society, is my own. ✓"'7 am al¬ 
ways environed by myself. On the other part, rectitude is 
a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy, but by 
20 * dd 


466 


CHARACTER. 


serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual. It is disgraceful to 
fly to events for confirmation of our truth and worth. The 
capitalist does not run every hour to the broker, to coin his 
advantages into current money of the realm; he is satisfied 
to read in the quotations of the market, that his stocks have 
risen. The same transport which the occurrence of the best 
events in the best order would occasion me, I must learn to 
taste purer in the perception that my position is every hour 
meliorated, and does already command those events I desire. 
That exultation is only to be checked by the foresight of an 
order of things so excellent, as to throw all our prosperities 
into the deepest shade. 

The face which character wears to me is self-sufficingness. 
I revere the person who is riches; so that I cannot think of 
him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but 
as perpetual patron, benefactor, and beatified man. Character 
is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. 
A man should give us a sense of mass. Society is frivolous, 
and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies 
and escapes. But if I go to see an ingenious man, I shall 
think myself poorly entertained if he give me nimble pieces 
of benevolence and etiquette ; rather he shall stand stoutly 
in his place, and let me apprehend, if it were only his re¬ 
sistance ; know that I have encountered a new and positive 
quality; great refreshment for both of us. It is much, that 
he does not accept the conventional opinions and practices. 
That non-conformity will remain a goad and remembrancer, 
and every inquirer will have to dispose of him, in the first 
place. There is nothing real or useful that is not a seat of 
war. Our houses ring with laughter, and personal and criti¬ 
cal gossip, but it helps little. But the uncivil, unavailable 
man, who is a problem and a threat to society, whom it cannot 
let pass in silence, but must either worship or hate, — and to 
whom all parties feel related, both the leaders of opinion, and 
the obscure and eccentric, — he helps ; he puts America and 
* Europe in the wrong, and destroys the scepticism which says, 
1 man is a doll, let us eat and drink, ’t is the best we can do,’ 
by illuminating the untried and unknown. Acquiescence in 
the establishment, and appeal to the public, indicate infirm 
faith, heads which are not clear, and which must see a house 
built, before they can comprehend the plan of it. The wise 
man not only leaves out of his thought the many, but leaves 
out the few. Fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed, the 


CHARACTER. 


467 


commander because he is commanded, the assured, the pri¬ 
mary,— they are good; for these announce the instant pres¬ 
ence of supreme power. 

Our action should rest mathematically on our substance. 
In nature, there are no false valuations. A pound of wa¬ 
ter in the ocean-tempest has no more gravity than in a mid¬ 
summer pond. All things work exactly according to their 
quality, and according to their quantity; attempt nothing 
they cannot do, except man only. He has pretension : 
he wishes and attempts things beyond his force. I read in 
a book of English memoirs, “Mr. Fox (afterwards Lord 
Holland) said, he must have the Treasury ; he had served 
up to it, and would have it.” Xenophon and his Ten Thou¬ 
sand were quite equal to what they attempted, and did 
it: so equal, that it was not suspected to be a grand and in¬ 
imitable exploit. Yet there stands that fact unrepeated, a 
high-water mark in military history. Many have attempted it 
since, and not been equal to it. It is only on reality, that 
any power of action can be based. No institution will be bet¬ 
ter than the institutor. I knew an amiable and accomplished 
person who undertook a practical reform, yet I was never 
able to find in him the enterprise of love he took in haiid. 
He adopted it by ear and by the understanding from the 
books he had been reading. All his action was tentative, a 
piece of the city carried out into the fields, and was the city 
still, and no new fact, and could not inspire enthusiasm. Had 
there been something latent in the man, a terrible undemon¬ 
strated genius agitating and embarrassing his demeanor, we 
had 'watched for its advent. It is not enough that the intel¬ 
lect should see the evils, and their remedy. We shall still 
postpone our existence, nor take the ground to which we are 
entitled, whilst it is only a thought, and not a spirit that in¬ 
cites us. We have not yet served up to it. 

These are properties of life, and another trait is the notice 
of incessant growth. Men should be intelligent and earnest. 
They must also make us feel, that they have a controlling 
happy future, opening before them, whose early twilights 
already kindle in the passing hour. The hero is misconceived 
and misreported : he cannot therefore wait to unravel any 
man’s blunders : he is again on his road, adding new powers 
and honors to his domain, and new claims on your heart, 
which will bankrupt you, if you have loitered about the old 
things, and have not kept your relation to him, by adding to 


468 


CHARACTER. 


your wealth. New actions are the only apologies and expla¬ 
nations of old ones, which the noble can bear to offer or to re¬ 
ceive. If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit 
down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the 
passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you 
can rise up again, will burden you with blessings. 

We have no pleasure in thinking Of a benevolence that is 
only measured by its works. Love is inexhaustible, and if its 
estate is wasted, its granary emptied, still cheers and enriches, 
and the man, though he sleep, seems to purify the air, and his 
house to adorn the landscape and strengthen the laws. Peo¬ 
ple always recognize this difference. We know who is benevo¬ 
lent, by quite other means than the amount of subscription to 
soup-societies. It is only low merits that can be enumerated. 
Fear, when your friends say to you what you have done well, 
and say it through ; but when they stand with uncertain 
timid looks of respect and half-dislike, and must suspend their 
judgment for years to come, you may begin to hope. Those 
who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who 
live to the present. Therefore it was droll in the good 
Piemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, to make out a 
list of his donations and good deeds, as, so many hundred 
thalers given to Stilling, to Hegel, to Tischbein : a lucrative 
place found for Professor Yoss, a post under the Grand Duke 
for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two professors recommended 
to foreign universities, &c., &c. The longest list of specifica¬ 
tions of benefit would look very short. A man is a poor 
creature, if he is to be measured so. For, all these, of course, 
are exceptions ; and the rule and hodiernal life of a good man 
is benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to be inferred 
from the account he gave Dr. Eckermann, of the way in which 
he had spent his fortune. “ Each bon-mot of mine has cost a 
purse of gold. Half a million of my own money, the fortune 
I inherited, my salary, and the large income derived from my 
writings for fifty years back, have been expended to instruct 
me in what I now know. I have besides seen,” &c. 

I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to enumerate 
traits of this simple and rapid power, and-we are painting the 
lightning with charcoal; but in these long nights and vaca¬ 
tions, I like to console myself so. Nothing but itself can copy 
it. A word warm from the heart enriches me. I surrender at 
discretion. How death-cold is literary genius before this fire 
of life ! These are the touches that reanimate my heavy soul. 


CHARACTER. 


469 


and give it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, where I 
thought myself poor, there was I most rich. Thence comes a 
new intellectual exaltation, to be again rebuked by some new 
exhibition of character. Strange alternation of attraction and 
repulsion ! Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and 
character passes into thought, is published so, and then is 
ashamed before new flashes of moral worth. 
f Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no use to 
ape it, or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resist¬ 
ance, and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which 
will foil all emulation. 

This masterpiece is best wdiere no hands but nature’s have 
been laid on it. Care is taken that the greatly-destined shall 
slip up into life in the shade, with no thousand-eyed Athens to 
watch and blazon every new thought, every blushing emotion 
of young genius. Two persons lately — very young children 
of the most high God — have given me occasion for thought. 
When I explored the source of their sanctity, and charm for 
the imagination, it seemed as if' each answered, ‘ From my 
nonconformity: I never listened to your people’s law, or to 
what they call their gospel, and wasted my time. I was con¬ 
tent with the simple rural poverty of my own ; hence this 
sweetness : my work never reminds you of that ; —is pure of 
that.’ And nature advertises me in such persons, that, in dem¬ 
ocratic America, she will not be democratized. How clois¬ 
tered and constitutionally sequestered from the market and 
from scandal! It was only this morning, that I sent away 
some wild flowers of these wood-gods. They are a relief from 
literature, — these fresh draughts from the sources of thought 
and sentiment; as we read, in an age of polish and criticism, 
the first lines of written prose and verse of a nation. How 
captivating is their devotion to their favorite books, whether 
iEschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, or Scott, as feeling that they 
have a stake in that book : who touches that, touches them; 
and especially the total solitude of the critic, the Patmos of 
thought from which he writes, in unconsciousness of any eyes 
that shall ever read this writing. Could they dream on still, 
as angels, and not wake to comparisons, and to be flattered ! 
Yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and 
wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, 
there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn 
them of the danger of the head’s being turned by the flourish 
of trumpets, but they can afford to smile. 1 remember the in- 


470 


CHARACTER. 


dignation of an eloquent Methodist at the kind admonitions 
of a Doctor of Divinity, — ‘ My friend, a man can neither he 
praised nor insulted.’ But forgive the counsels ; they are very 
natural. I remember the thought which occurred to me 
when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, 
was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither 1 — or, 
prior to that, answer me this, ‘ Are you victimizable ? ’ 

As I have said, Nature keeps these sovereignties in her own 
hands, and however pertly our sermons and disciplines would 
divide some share of credit, and teach that the laws fashion 
the citizen, she goes her own gait, and puts the wisest in the 
wrong. She makes very light of gospels and prophets, as one 
who has a great many more to produce, and no excess of time 
to spare on any one. There is a class of men, individuals of 
which appear at long intervals, so eminently endowed with in¬ 
sight and virtue, that they have been unanimously saluted as 
divine , and who seem to be an accumulation of that power we 
consider. Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a 
phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized. They are 
usually received with ill-will, because they are new, and be¬ 
cause they set a bound to the exaggeration that has been made 
of the personality of the last divine person. Nature never 
rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see 
a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, 
and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result 
which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the prob¬ 
lem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his 
own high unprecedented way. Character wants room ; must 
not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses 
got in the press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs per¬ 
spective, as a great building. It may not, probably does not, 
form relations rapidly ; and we should not require rash expla¬ 
nation, either on the popular ethics, or on our own, of its action. 

I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo 
and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait which 
the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better 
than his copy. We have seen many counterfeits, but we are 
born believers in great men. How easily we read in old books, 
when men were few, of the smallest action of the patriarchs. 
We require that a man should be so large and columnar in 
the landscape, that it should deserve to be recorded, that he 
arose, and girded up his loins, and departed to such a place. 
The most credible pictures are those of majestic men who pre- 


CHARACTER. 


471 


vailed at their entrance, and convinced the senses; as hap¬ 
pened to the Eastern magian who was sent to test the merits 
of Zertusht or Zoroaster. When the Yunani sage arrived at 
Balkh, the Persians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a day on 
which the Mobeds of every country should assemble, and a 
golden chair was placed for the Yunani sage. Then the be¬ 
loved of Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht, advanced into the 
midst of the assembly. The Yunani sage, on seeing that chief, 
said, “ This form and this gait cannot lie, and nothing but 
truth can proceed from them.” Plato said, it was impossible 
not to believe in the children of the gods, “ though they should 
speak without probable or necessary arguments.” I should 
think myself very unhappy in my associates, if I could not cred¬ 
it the best things in history. “John Bradshaw,” says Milton, 
“ appears like a consul, from whom the fasces are not to de¬ 
part with the year; so that not on the tribunal only, but 
throughout his life, you would regard him as sitting in judg¬ 
ment upon kings.” I find it more creditable, since it is ante¬ 
rior information, that one man should Know heaven , as the 
Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world. 
“ The virtuous prince confronts the gods, without any misgiv¬ 
ing. He waits a hundred ages till a sage comes, and does not 
doubt. He who confronts the gods without any misgiving, 
knows heaven; he who waits a hundred ages until a sage 
comes, without doubting, knows men. Hence the virtuous 
prince moves, and for ages shows empire the way.” But there 
is no need to seek remote examples. He is a dull observer 
whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of 
magic, as well as of chemistry. The coldest precisian cannot 
go abroad without encountering inexplicable influences. One 
man fastens an eye on him, and the graves of the memory ren¬ 
der up their dead; the secrets that make him wretched either 
to keep or to betray must be yielded; another, and he cannot 
speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their cartilages ; 
the entrance of a friend adds grace, boldness, and eloquence to 
him ; and there are persons he cannot choose but remember, 
who gave a transcendent expansion to his thought, and kindled 
another life in his bosom. 

What is so excellent as strict relations of amity, when they 
spring from this deep root 'l The sufficient reply to the scep¬ 
tic, who doubts the power and the furniture of man, is in that 
possibility of joyful intercourse wfith persons, which makes 
the faith and practice of all reasonable men. I know nothing 


472 


CHARACTER. 


which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good un¬ 
derstanding, which can subsist, after much exchange of good 
offices, between two virtuous men, each of wdiom is sure of 
himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which post¬ 
pones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and com¬ 
merce, and churches, cheap. For, when men shall meet as 
they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with 
thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the 
festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friend¬ 
ship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things 
are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, 
at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in 
the progress of the character, the most solid enjoyment. 

If it were possible to live in right relations with men ! — if 
we could abstain from asking anything of them, from asking 
their praise, or help, or pity, and content us with compelling 
them through the virtue of the eldest laws! Could we not 
deal with a few persons, — with one person, — after the un¬ 
written statutes, and make an experiment of their efficacy? 
Could we not pay our friend the compliment of truth, of si¬ 
lence, of forbearing? Need we be so eager to seek him? If 
we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the an¬ 
cient world that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a 
god ; and there is a Greek verse which runs, 

“ The Gods are to each other not unknown.” 

Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravi¬ 
tate to each other, and cannot otherwise; 

When each the other shall avoid, 

Shall each by each be most enjoyed. 

Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods must seat 
themselves without seneschal in our Olympus, and as they can 
install themselves by seniority divine. Society is spoiled, if 
pains are taken, if the associates are brought a mile to meet. 
And if it be not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jan¬ 
gle, though made up of the best. All the greatness of each is 
kept back, and every foible in painful activity, as if the Olym¬ 
pians should meet to exchange snuff-boxes. 

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we 
are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if sud¬ 
denly we encounter a friend, we pause ; our heat and hurry 
look foolish enough ; now pause, now possession, is required, 
and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the 
heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations. 


CHARACTER. 


473 


A divine person is the prophecy of the mind ; a friend is 
the hope of the heart. Our beatitude waits for the fulfilment 
of these two in one. The ages are opening this moral force. 
All force is the shadow or symbol of that. Poetry is joyful 
and strong, as it draws its inspiration thence. Men write 
their names on the world, as they are filled with this. History 
has been mean ; our nations have been mobs ; we have never 
seen a man : that divine form we do not yet know, but only 
the dream and prophecy of such : we do not know the majestic 
manners which belong to him, which appease and exalt the 
beholder. We shall one day see that the most private is the 
most public energy, that quality atones for quantity, and 
grandeur of character acts in the dark, and succors them who 
never saw it. What greatness has yet appeared, is beginnings 
and encouragements to us in this direction. The history of 
those gods and saints which the world has written, and then 
worshipped, are documents of character. The ages have ex¬ 
ulted in the manners of a youth who owed nothing to fortune, 
and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the 
pure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendor around the 
facts of his death, which has transfigured every particular into 
an universal symbol for the eyes of mankind. This great de¬ 
feat is hitherto our highest fact. But the mind requires a 
victory to the senses, a force of character which will convert 
judge, jury, soldier, and king; which will rule animal and 
mineral virtues, and blend with the courses of sap, of rivers, 
of winds, of stars, and of moral agents. 

If we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs, at least, 
let us do them homage. In society, high advantages are set 
down to the possessor, as disadvantages. It requires the more 
wariness in our private estimates. I do not forgive in my 
friends the failure to know a fine character, and to entertain it 
with thankful hospitality. When, at last, that which we have 
always longed for, is arrived, and shines on us with glad rays 
out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then to be 
critical, and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicion 
of the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors 
of heaven. This is confusion, this the right insanity, when 
the soul no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its 
religion, are due. Is there any religion but this, to know, 
that, wherever in the wide desert of being, the holy sentiment 
we cherish has opened into a fknver, it blooms for me ? if none 
sees it, I see it; lam aware, if I alone, of the greatness of 


474 


CHARACTER. 


the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep sabbath or holy time, 
and suspend my gloom, and my folly and jokes. Nature is 
indulged by the presence of this guest. There are many eyes 
that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues ; 
there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, 
though the mob is incapable : but when that love which is all¬ 
suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, 
that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner 
than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our 
streets and houses, — only the pure and aspiring can know its 
face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it. 


MANNERS 


“ How near to good is what is fair! 

Which Ave no sooner see, 

But Avith the lines and outAvard air 
Our senses taken be. 

“ Again yourseh r es compose, 

And uoav put all the aptness on 
Of Figure, that Proportion 
Or Color can disclose; 

That if those silent arts Avere lost, 
Design and Picture, they might boast 
From you a newer ground, 

Instructed by the heightening sense 
Of dignity and reverence 
In their true motions found.” 

Ben Jon son. 






MANNERS. 


H ALF the world, it is said, knows not how the other half 
live. Our Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee-Island- 
ers getting their dinner off human bones; and they are said to 
eat their own wives and children. The husbandry of the 
modem inhabitants of Goumou (west of old Thebes) is philo¬ 
sophical to a fault. To set up their housekeeping, nothing is 
requisite but two or three earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, 
and a mat which is the bed. The house, namely, a tomb, is 
ready without rent or taxes. No rain can pass through the 
roof and there is no door, for there is no want of one, as there 
is nothing to lose. If the house do not please them, they 
walk out and enter another, as there are several hundreds at 
their command. “ It is somewhat singular,” adds Belzoni, to, 
whom we owe this account, “to talk of happiness among 
people who live in sepulchres, among the corpses and rags of 
an ancient nation which they know nothing of.” In the deserts 
of Borgoo, the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like cliff-swal¬ 
lows, and the language of these negroes is compared by their 
neighbors to the shrieking of bats, and to the whistling of 
birds. Again, the Bornoos have no proper names; individuals 
are called after their height, thickness, or other accidental 
quality, and have nicknames merely. But the salt, the dates, 
the ivory, and the gold, for which these horrible regions are vis¬ 
ited, find their way into countries, where the purchaser and con¬ 
sumer can hardly be ranked in one race with these cannibals 
and man-stealers; countries where man serves himself with 
metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk, and wool; honors 
himself with architecture; writes laws, and contrives to ex¬ 
ecute his will through the hands of many nations; and, 
especially, establishes a select society, running through all the 
countries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or 



478 


MANNERS. 


fraternity of the best, which, without written law or exact 
usage of any kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new- 
planted island, and adopts and makes its own whatever per¬ 
sonal beauty or extraordinary native endowment anywhere 
appears. 

What fact more conspicuous in modern history, than the 
creation of the gentleman 1 Chivalry is that, and loyalty is 
that, and, in English literature, half the drama, and all the 
novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this 
figure. The word gentleman , which, like the word Christian , 
must hereafter characterize the present and the few preceding 
centuries, by the importance attached to it, is a homage to 
personal and incommunicable properties. Frivolous and fan¬ 
tastic additions have got associated with the name, but the 
steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed to the 
valuable properties which it designates. An element which 
unites all the most forcible persons of every country; makes 
them intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is somewhat 
so precise, that it is at once felt if an individual lack the 
masonic sign, cannot be any casual product, but must be an 
average result of the character and faculties universally found 
in men. It seems a certain permanent average ; as the at¬ 
mosphere is a permanent composition, whilst so many gases are 
combined only to be decompounded. Comme il faut, is the 
Frenchman’s description of good society, as we must be. It is 
a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that 
class who have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of 
this hour, and, though far from pure, far from constituting the 
gladdest and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the 
whole society permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more 
than of the talent of men, and is a compound result, into 
which every great force enters as an ingredient, namely, vir¬ 
tue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power. 

There is something equivocal in all the words in use to ex¬ 
press the excellence of manners and social cultivation, because 
the quantities are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by 
the senses as the cause. The word gentleman has not any 
correlative abstract to express the quality. Gentility is mean, 
and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must keep alive in the ver¬ 
nacular the distinction between fashion , a word of narrow 
and often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which the 
gentleman imports. The usual words, however, must be re¬ 
spected : they will be found to contain the root of the matter. 


MANNERS. 


479 


The point of distinction in all this class of names, as courtesy, 
chivalry, fashion, and the like, is, that the flower aijd fruit, 
not the grain of the tree, are contemplated. It is beauty 
which is the aim this time, and not worth. The result is now 
in question, although our words intimate well enough the 
popular feeling, that the appearance supposes a substance. 
The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and 
expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner 
dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or pos¬ 
sessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word 
denotes good-nature or benevolence : manhood first, and then 
gentleness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition of 
ease and fortune ; but that is a natural result of personal 
force and love, that they should possess and dispense the 
goods of the world. In times of violence, every eminent per¬ 
son must fall in with many opportunities to approve his stout¬ 
ness and worth; therefore every man’s name that emerged at 
all from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in our ear like a 
flourish of trumpets. But personal force never goes out of 
fashion. That is still paramount to-day, and, in the moving 
crowd of good society, the men of valor and reality are known, 
and rise to their natural place. The competition is transferred 
from war to politics and trade, but the personal force appears 
readily enough in these new arenas. 

Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade, 
bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and 
clerks. God knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the 
door ; but whenever used in strictness, and with any emphasis, 
the name will be found to point at original energy. It de¬ 
scribes a man standing in his own right, and working after 
untaught methods. In a good lord, there must first be a good 
animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incomparable 
advantage of animal spirits. The ruling class must have 
more, but they must have these, giving in every company the 
sense of power, which makes things easy to be done which 
daunt the wise. The society of the energetic class, in their 
friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, and of at¬ 
tempts, which intimidate the pale scholar. The courage which 
girls exhibit is like a battle of Lundy’s Lane, or a sea-fight. 
The intellect relies on memory to make some supplies to face 
these extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a base men¬ 
dicant with basket and badge, in the presence of these sudden 
masters. The rulers of society must be up to the work of the 


480 


MANNERS. 


world, and equal to their versatile office : men of the right 
Caesarian pattern, who have great range of affinity. I am far 
from believing the timid maxim of Lord Falkland, (“that for 
ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go 
through the cunningest forms,”) and am of opinion that the 
gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are not to be broken 
through; and only that plenteous nature is rightful master, 
which is the complement of whatever person it converses 
with. My gentleman gives the law where he is ; he will out- 
pray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and out¬ 
shine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates, 
and good with academicians ; so that it is useless to fortify 
yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all 
minds, and I could as easily exclude myself, as him. The 
famous gentlemen of Asia and Europe have been of this 
strong type : Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Ca3sar, Scipio, 
Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They sat 
very carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent them¬ 
selves, to value any condition at a high rate. 

A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular 
judgment, to the completion of this man of the world; and 
it is a material deputy which walks through the dance which 
the first has led. Money is not essential, but this wide af¬ 
finity is, which transcends the habits of clique and caste, and 
makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the aristocrat is 
only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen, he 
will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the peo¬ 
ple cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that 
the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his 
own order, he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates, and 
Epaminondas are gentlemen of the best blood, who have 
chosen the condition of poverty, when that of wealth was 
equally open to them. I use these old names, but the men 
I speak of are my contemporaries. Fortune will not supply 
to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but 
every collection of men furnishes some example of the class; 
and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town, 
are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who 
have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which 
puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their action 
popular. 

The manners of this class are observed and caught with 
devotion by men of taste. The association of these masters 


MANNERS. 


481 


with each other, and with men intelligent of their merits, is 
mutually agreeable and stimulating. The good forms, the 
happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. By 
swift consent, everything superfluous is dropped, everything 
graceful is renewed. Fine manners show themselves formi¬ 
dable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler science of 
defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the 
skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword, — 
points and fences disappear, and the yotith finds himself in a 
more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less trouble¬ 
some game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the 
players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impedi¬ 
ments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our 
dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by get¬ 
ting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving 
nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very 
soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated 
with the more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and 
civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal sem¬ 
blance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, 
the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence 
assault in vain. 

There exists a strict relation between the class of power, 
and the exclusive and polished circles. The last are always 
filled or filling from the first. The strong men usually give 
some allowance even to the petulances of fashion, for that 
affinity they find in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution, 
destroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to court the Fau¬ 
bourg St. Germain : doubtless with the feeling, that fashion 
is a homage to men of his stamp. Fashion, though in a 
strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone 
to seed : it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often 
caress the great, but the children of the great; it is a hall of 
the Past. It usually sets its face against the great of this 
hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls: they are 
absent in the field : they are working, not triumphing. Fash¬ 
ion is made up of their children; of those who, through the 
value and virtue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their 
name, marks of distinction, means of cultivation and gener¬ 
osity, and, in their physical organization, a certain health and 
excellence, which secures to them, if not the highest power to 
work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power, the work¬ 
ing heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this 

VOL. i. 21 EE 


482 


MANNERS. 


is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they; 
that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and Trafal¬ 
gar beaten out thin; that the brilliant names of fashion run 
back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty 
years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the reap¬ 
ers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must 
yield the possession of the harvest to new competitors with 
keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is recruited from 
the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate 
monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died 
out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it Avas reinforced 
from the fields. It is only country which came to town day 
before yesterday, that is city and court to-day. 

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These 
mutual selections are indestructible. If they provoke anger 
in the least favored class, and the excluded majority revenge 
themselves on the excluding minority, by the strong hand, and 
kill them, at once a new class finds itself at the top, as cer¬ 
tainly as cream rises in a bowl of milk : and if the people 
should destroy class after class, until two men only were left, 
one of these would be the leader, and would be involuntarily 
served and copied by the other. You may keep this minority 
out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and 
is one of the estates of the realm. I am the more struck 
with this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the ad¬ 
ministration of such unimportant matters, that we should not 
look for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men 
under some strong moral influence, as, a patriotic, a literary, 
a religious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules 
man and nature. We think all other distinctions and ties 
will be slight and fugitive, this of caste or fashion, for ex¬ 
ample ; yet come from year to year, and see how permanent 
that is, in this Boston or New York life of man, where, too, it 
has not the least countenance from the law of the land. Not 
in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable line. Here 
are associations whose ties go over, and under, and through it, 
a meeting of merchants, a military corps, a college class, a 
fire-club, a professional association, a political, a religious con¬ 
vention ; — the persons seem to draw inseparably near ; yet, 
that assembly once dispersed, its members will not in the 
year meet again. Each returns to his degree in the scale of 
good society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen. 
The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion may be 


MANNERS. 


483 


objectless, but the nature of this union and selection can be 
neither frivolous nor accidental. Each man’s rank in that 
perfect graduation depends on some symmetry in his struc¬ 
ture, or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of 
society. Its doors unbar instantaneously to a natural claim 
of their own kind. A natural gentleman finds his way in, 
and will keep the oldest patrician out, who has lost his in¬ 
trinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and 
personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize 
with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have 
distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity 
of their toumure. 

To say what good of fashion we can, — it rests on reality, 
and hates nothing so much as pretenders; — to exclude and 
mystify pretenders, and send them into everlasting ‘ Coventry/ 
is its delight. We contemn, in turn, every other gift of men 
of the world; but the habit even in little and the least mat¬ 
ters, of not appealing to any but our own sense of propriety, 
constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost no 
kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and proportioned, which 
fashion does not occasionally adopt, and give it the freedom of 
its saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, 
passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will 
Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, 
and find favor, as long as his head is not giddy with the new 
circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in 
waltzes and cotillons. For there is nothing settled in manners, 
but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. 
The maiden at her first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, 
believes that there is a ritual according to which every act and 
compliment must be performed, or the failing party must be 
cast out of this presence. Later, they learn that good sense 
and character make their own forms every moment, and speak 
or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or 
sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or 
what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way ; and that strong 
will is always in fashion, let who "will be unfashionable. All 
that fashion demands is composure, and self-content. A circle 
of men perfectly well-bred would be a company of sensible 
persons, in which every man’s native manners and character 
appeared. If the fashionist have not this quality, he is nothing. 
We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man 
many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his 


484 


MANNERS. 


position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man’s good 
opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or woman 
of the world forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an under¬ 
ling ; I have nothing to do with him ; I will speak w T ith his 
master. A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole 
sphere or society with him, — not bodily, the whole circle of 
his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new 
company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, 
which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his 
best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. “ If 

you could see Vich Ian Yohr with his tail on!-•” But Vich 

Ian Yohr must always carry his belongings in some fashion, if 
not added as honor, then severed as disgrace. 

There will always be in society certain persons who are mer¬ 
curies of its approbation, and whose glance will at any time 
determine for the curious their standing in the world. These 
are the chamberlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness 
as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and allow them all 
their privilege. They are clear in their office, nor could they 
be thus formidable, without their own merits. But do not 
measure the importance of this class by their pretension, or 
imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and shame. 
They pass also at their just rate ; for how can they otherwise, 
in circles which exist as a sort of herald’s office for the sifting 
of character ] 

As the first thing man requires of man, is reality, so, that 
appears in all the forms of society. We pointedly, and by 
name, introduce the parties to each other. Know you before 
all heaven and earth, that this is Andrew, and this is Gregory ; 
they look each other in the eye ; they grasp each other’s hand, 
to identify and signalize each other. It is a great satisfaction. 
A gentleman never dodges ; his eyes look straight forward, and 
he assures the other party, first of all, that he has been met. 
For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and hospitalities 1 
Is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations ? Or, do we not 
insatiably ask, Was a man in the house 1 I may easily go into 
a great household where there is much substance, excellent 
provision for comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter 
there any Amphitryon, who shall subordinate these appendages. 
I may go into a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is 
the man I have come to see, and fronts me accordingly. It 
was therefore a very natural point of old feudal etiquette, that 
a gentleman who received a visit, though it were of his sov- 



MANNERS. 


485 


ereign, should not leave his roof, but should wait his arrival at 
the door of his house. No house, though it were the Tuileries, 
or the Escurial, is good for anything without a master. And 
yet we are not often gratified by this hospitality. Everybody 
we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, con¬ 
servatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens 
to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem 
as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded noth¬ 
ing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow 1 
It were unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of these 
screens, which are of eminent convenience, whether the guest 
is too great, or too little. We call together many friends who 
keep each other in play, or, by luxuries and ornaments we 
amuse the young people, and guard our retirement. Or if, 
perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose 
eye we have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, 
and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice of the Lord God in 
the garden. Cardinal Caprara, the Pope’s legate at Paris, 
defended himself from the glances of Napoleon, by an immense 
pair of green spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speed¬ 
ily managed to rally them off’; and yet, Napoleon, in his turn, 
was not great enough, with eight hundred thousand troops at 
his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but fenced himself 
with etiquette, and within triple barriers of reserve ; and, as 
all the world knows from Madame de Stael, was wont, when he 
found himself observed, to discharge his face of all expression. 
But emperors and rich men are by no means the most skilful 
masters of good manners. No rent-roll nor army-list can dig¬ 
nify skulking and dissimulation ; and the first point to courtesy 
must always be truth, as really all the forms of good breeding 
point that way. 

I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt’s translation, Mon¬ 
taigne’s account Of his journey into Italy, and am struck with 
nothing more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of 
the time. His arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentle¬ 
man of France, is an event of some consequence. Wherever 
he goes, he pays a visit to whatever prince or gentleman of 
note resides upon his road, as a duty to himself and to civiliza¬ 
tion. When he leaves any house in which he has lodged for 
a few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung up 
as a perpetual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentle¬ 
men. 

The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all 


486 


MANNERS. 


the points of good breeding I most require and insist upon, 
is deference. I like that every chair should be a throne, and 
hold a king. I prefer a tendency to stateliness, to an excess 
of fellowship. Let the incommunicable objects of nature and 
the metaphysical isolation of man teach us independence. Let 
us not be too much acquainted. T would have a man enter 
his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculp¬ 
tures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and self¬ 
poise. We should meet each morning as from foreign coun¬ 
tries, and spending the day together, should depart at night, 
as into foreign countries. In all things I would have the isl¬ 
and of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking 
from peak to peak all around Olympus. No degree of affection 
need invade this religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep 
the other sweet. Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they 
forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness. It 
is easy to push this deference to a Chinese etiquette; but 
coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. 
A gentleman makes no noise : a lady is serene. Proportionate 
is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house wfith 
blast and running, to secure some paltry convenience. Not 
less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbor’s 
needs. Must we have a good understanding -with one anoth¬ 
er’s palates 'l as foolish people who have lived long together 
know when each wants salt or sugar. I pray my companion, 
if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for 
sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out 
his plate as if I knew already. Every natural function can be 
dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry to 
slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding 
should recall, however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny. 

The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, 
but if we dare to open another leaf, and explore what parts 
go to its conformation, we shall find also an intellectual qual¬ 
ity. To the leaders of men, the brain as well as the flesh and 
the heart must furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is 
usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely 
made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is 
not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and 
independence. We imperatively require a perception of, and 
a homage to, beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in 
request in the field and work-yard, but a certain degree of taste 
is not to be spared in those we sit with. I could better eat 


MANNERS. 


487 


with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with 
a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the 
world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. The 
same discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigor, 
into all parts of life. The average spirit of the energetic class 
is good sense, acting under certain limitations and to certain 
ends. It entertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, 
it respects everything which tends to unite men. It delights 
in measure. The love of beauty is mainly the love of meas¬ 
ure or proportion. The person who screams, or uses the su¬ 
perlative degree, or converses with heat, is quickly left alone. 
If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius, 
or a prodigious usefulness, if you -will hide the want of meas¬ 
ure. This perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts 
of the social instrument. Society will pardon much to genius 
and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it loves 
what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together. 
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps 
or hinders fellowship. For, fashion is not good sense abso¬ 
lute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense en¬ 
tertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of 
character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy 
people; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of 
parties ; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the highest de¬ 
gree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And 
besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the 
direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine 
society as the costliest condition to its rule and its credit. 

The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it 
must be tempered and shaded, or that will also offend. Accu¬ 
racy is essential to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, 
but not too quick perceptions. One may be too punctual and 
too precise. He must leave the omniscience of business at the 
door, when he comes into the palace of beauty. Society loves 
creole natures, and sleepy, languishing manners, so that they 
cover sense, grace, and good-will: the air of drowsy strength, 
which disarms criticism; perhaps, because such a person 
seems to reserve himself for the best of the game, and not 
spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which does not 
see the annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences, that cloud the 
brow and smother the voice of the sensitive. 

Therefore, beside personal force and so much perception as 
constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its patrician 


488 


MANNERS. 


class, another element already intimated, which it significantly 
terms good-nature, expressing all degrees of generosity, from 
the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige, up to the heights 
of magnanimity and love. Insight we must have, or we shall 
run against one another, and miss the way to our food; but 
intellect is selfish and barren. The secret of success in society 
is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not 
happy in the company, cannot find any word in his memory 
that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little im¬ 
pertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of 
the conversation equally lucky occasions for the introduction 
of that which he has to say. The favorites of society, and 
what it calls whole souls, are able men, and of more spirit than 
wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill 
the hour and the company, contented and contenting, at a 
marriage or a funeral, a ball or a jury, a water-party or a 
shooting-match. England, which is rich in gentlemen, fur¬ 
nished, in the beginning of the present century, a good model 
of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added 
to his great abilities the most social disposition, and real love 
of men. Parliamentary history has few better passages than 
the debate, in which Burke and Fox separated in the House 
of Commons ; when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of 
old friendship with such tenderness, that the house was moved 
to tears. Another anecdote is so close to my matter, that I must 
hazard the story. A tradesman who had long dunned him for 
a note of three hundred guineas, found him one day counting 
gold, and demanded payment. “No,” said Fox, “I owe this 
money to Sheridan : it is a debt of honor: if an accident 
should happen to me, he has nothing to show.” “ Then,” said 
the creditor, “ I change my debt into a debt of honor,” and 
tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the man for his confi¬ 
dence, and paid him, saying, “ his debt was of older standing, 
and Sheridan must wait.” Lover of liberty, friend of the Hin¬ 
doo, friend of the African slave, he possessed a great personal 
popularity ; and Napoleon said of him on the occasion of his 
visit to Paris, in 1805, “Mr. Fox will always hold the first 
place in an assembly at the Tuileries.” 

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, 
whenever we insist on benevolence as its foundation. The 
painted phantasm Fashion rises to cast a species of derision 
on what we say. But I will neither be driven from some 
allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the 


MANNERS. 


489 


belief that love is the basis of courtesy. We must obtain 
that, if we can; but by all means we must affirm this. Life 
owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion 
which affects to be honor, is often, in all men’s experience, only 
a ball-room code. Yet, so long as it is the highest circle, in 
the imagination of the best heads on the planet, there is some¬ 
thing necessary and excellent in it; for it is not to be supposed 
that men have agreed to be the dupes of anything prepos¬ 
terous ; and the respect which these mysteries inspire in the 
most rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which 
details of Ijigh life are read, betray the universality of the love 
of cultivated manners. I know that a comic disparity would 
be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged ‘ first circles,’ and 
apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit 
to the individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes, 
sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many 
classes and many rules of probation and admission ; and not 
the best alone. There is not only the right of conquest, which 
genius pretends,—the individual, demonstrating his natural 
aristocracy best of the best; — but less claims will pass for 
the time ; for Fashion loves lions, and points, like Circe, to 
her horned company. This gentleman is this afternoon arrived 
from Denmark ; and that is my Lord Ride, who came yester¬ 
day from Bagdat; here is Captain Friese, from Cape Turn- 
again ; and Captain Symmes, from the interior of the earth; 
and Monsieur Jovaire, who came down this morning in a bal¬ 
loon ; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer ; and Reverend Jul Bat, who 
has converted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school; and 
Signor Torre del Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by pour¬ 
ing into it the Bay of Naples ; Spahi, the Persian ambassador; 
and Tul Wil Shan, the exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose sad¬ 
dle is the new moon. — But these are monsters of one day, 
and to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and dens ) 
for, in these rooms, every chair is waited for. The artist, the 
scholar, and in general, the clerisy, wins its way up into these 
places, and gets represented here, somewhat on this footing of 
conquest. Another mode is to pass through all the degrees, 
spending a year and a day in St. Michael’s Square, being 
steeped in Cologne-water, and perfumed, and dined, and intro¬ 
duced, and properly grounded in all the biography, and poli¬ 
tics, and anecdotes of the boudoirs. 

Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be 
grotesque sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. 

21 * 


490 


MANNERS. 


Let the creed and commandments even have the saucy homage 
of parody. The forms of politeness universally express benev¬ 
olence in superlative degrees. What if they are in the mouths 
of selfish men, and used as means of selfishness f What if 
the false gentleman almost bows the true out of the world 1 
What if the false gentleman contrives so to address his com¬ 
panion, as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and 
also to make them feel excluded 1 Real service will not lose 
its nobleness. All generosity is not merely French and senti¬ 
mental ; nor is it to be concealed, that living blood and a pas¬ 
sion of kindness does at last distinguish God’s gentleman from 
Fashion’s. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly un¬ 
intelligible to the present age. “ Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, 
who loved his friend, and -persuaded his enemy : what his 
mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he 
restored : if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in 
pain: he never forgot his children : and whoso touched his 
finger, drew after it his whole body.” Even the line of heroes 
is not utterly extinct. There is still ever some admirable per¬ 
son in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps in to 
rescue a drowning man ; there is still some absurd inventor of 
charities ; some guide and comforter of runaway slaves ; some 
friend of Poland ; some Philhellene ; some fanatic who plants 
shade-trees for the second and third generation, and orchards 
when he is grown old ; some well-concealed piety; some just 
man happy in an ill-fame ; some youth ashamed of the favors 
of fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. 
And these are the centres of society, on which it returns for 
fresh impulses. These are the creators of Fashion, which is 
an attempt to organize beauty of behavior. The beautiful 
and the generous are, in the theory, the doctors and apostles 
of this church : Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, 
and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who wor¬ 
shipped Beauty by word and by deed. The persons who con¬ 
stitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual 
aristocracy, or, only on its edge ; as the chemical energy of the 
spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. 
Yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, who do not know 
their sovereign, when he appears. The theory of society sup¬ 
poses the existence and sovereignty of these. It divines afar 
off their coming. It says with the elder gods, — 

“ As Heaven and Earth are fairer far 
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; 




MANNERS. 


491 


And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth, 

In form and shape compact and beautiful; 

So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads; 

A power, more strong, in beauty, born of us, 

And fated to excel us, as we pass 
In glory that old Darkness: 

-for, ’t is the eternal law, 

That first in beauty shall be first in might.” 

Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there 
is a narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and 
flower of courtesj 7 ", to which there is always a tacit appeal of 
pride and reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the par¬ 
liament of love and chivalry. And this is constituted of those 
persons in whom heroic dispositions are native, with the love 
of beauty, the delight in society, and the power to embellish 
the passing day. If the individuals who compose the purest 
circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of cen¬ 
turies, should pass in review, in such manner as that we could, 
at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find 
no gentleman, and no lady ; for, although excellent specimens 
of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assem¬ 
blage, in the particulars we should detect offence. Because, 
elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. There must be 
romance of character, or the most fastidious exclusion of im¬ 
pertinences will not avail; It must be genius which takes 
that direction : it must be not courteous, but courtesy. High 
behavior is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. Scott is praised 
for the fidelity with which he painted the demeanor and con¬ 
versation^ the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens, 
nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the 
absurdity that had been put in their mouths, before the days 
of Waverley ; but neither does Scott’s dialogue bear criticism. 
His lords brave each other in smart epigrammatic speeches, 
but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the 
second reading : it is not warm with life. In Shakespeare 
alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is 
easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being the 
best-bred man in England, and in Christendom. Once or 
twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of 
noble manners, in the presence of a man or woman who 
have no bar in their nature, but whose character emanates 
freely in their word and gesture. A beautiful form is better 
than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a 
beautiful form : it gives a higher pleasure than statues or 
pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a 



492 


MANNERS. 


little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the 
moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish 
all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the 
majesty of the world. I have seen an individual, whose man¬ 
ners, though wholly within the conventions of elegant society, 
were never learned there, but were original and commanding, 
and held out protection and prosperity; one who did not need 
the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye; 
who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new 
modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette, 
with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured and free as Robin 
Hood ; yet with the port of an emperor, -— if need be, calm, 
serious, and fit to stand the gaze of millions. 

The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers, 
are the places where Man executes his will; let him yield or 
divide the sceptre at the door of the house. Woman, w r ith 
her instinct of behavior, instantly detects in man a love of 
trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of 
that large, flowing, and magnanimous deportment, which is 
indispensable as an exterior in the hall. Our American insti¬ 
tutions have been friendly to her, and at this moment, I esteem 
it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in women. A 
certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may 
give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman’s Rights. 
Certainly, let her be as much better placed in the laws and in 
social forms, as the most zealous reformer can ask, but I con¬ 
fide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that I 
believe only herself can show us how she shall be served. The 
wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at times 
into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of 
Minerva, Juno, or Polymnia ; and, by the firmness with which 
she treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest calcu¬ 
lators that another road exists, than that which their feet 
know. But besides those who make good in our imagination 
the place of muses and of Delphic Sibyls, are there not wo¬ 
men who fill our vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that 
the wine runs over and fills the house with perfume; who in¬ 
spire us with courtesy ; who unloose our tongues, and we 
speak ; who anoint our eyes, and we see h We say things we 
never thought to have said ; for once, our walls of habitual 
reserve vanished, and left us at large ; we were children play¬ 
ing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep us, we 
cried, in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be 


MANNERS. 


493 


sunny poets, and will write out in many-colored words the 
romance that you are. What Hafiz or Firdousi was it who 
said of his Persian Lilia, She was an elemental force, and 
astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw her day after 
day radiating, every instant, redundant joy and grace on all 
around her. She was a solvent powerful to reconcile all hetero¬ 
geneous persons into one society : like air or water, an element 
of such a great range of affinities, that it combines readily 
with a thousand substances. Where she is present, all others 
will be more than they are wont. She was a unit and whole, 
so that whatsoever she did became her. She had too much 
sympathy and desire to please, than that you could say, her 
manners were marked with dignity, yet no princess could sur¬ 
pass her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion. She did 
not study the Persian grammar, nor the books of the seven 
poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to be written 
upon her. For, though the bias of her nature was not to 
thought, but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own 
nature, as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her 
heart, warming them by her sentiments; believing, as she did, 
that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves 
noble. 

I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or Fashion, 
which seems so fair and picturesque to those who look at the 
contemporary facts for science or for entertainment, is not 
equally pleasant to all spectators. The constitution of our 
society makes it a giant’s castle to the ambitious youth who 
have not found their names enrolled in its Golden Book, and 
whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and privileges. 
They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy 
and relative : it is great by their allowance : its proudest gates 
will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For 
the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to 
suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy reme¬ 
dies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most 
four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. 
For, the advantages which fashion values are plants which 
thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. 
Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in 
the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial 
society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, 
in the heaven of thought or virtue. 


494 


MANNERS. 


But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. 
The worth of the thing signified must vindicate our taste for 
the emblem. Everything that is called fashion and courtesy 
humbles itself before the cause and fountain of honor, creator 
of titles and dignities, namely, the heart of love. 't'his is the 
royal blood, this the fire, which, in all countries and contin¬ 
gencies will work after its kind, and conquer and expand all 
that approaches it. This gives new meanings to every fact. 
This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but its own. 
What is rich % Are you rich enough to help anybody! to 
succor the unfashionable and the eccentric; rich enough to 
make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his 
consul’s paper which commends him “ To the charitable,” the 
swarthy Italian with his few broken words of English, the 
lame pauper hunted by overseers from town to town, even the 
poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble 
exception of your presence and your house, from the general 
bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they were 
greeted with a voice which made them both remember and 
hope 1 What is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute and 
conclusive reasons 1 What is gentle, but to allow it, and give 
their heart and yours one holiday from the national caution 1 
Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king 
of Schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful as the poor Os¬ 
man who dwelt at his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad 
and deep, that although his speech was so bold and free with 
the Koran, as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never 
a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had 
cut off his beard, or who had been mutilated under a vow, or 
had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at once to him, — 
that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable in the 
centre of the country, — that it seemed as if the instinct of 
all sufferers drew them to his side. And the madness which 
he harbored, he did not share. Is not this to be rich 1 this 
only to be rightly rich 1 

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very 
ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand. It is 
easy to see, that what is called by distinction society and 
fashion, has good laws as well as bad, has much that is neces¬ 
sary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and 
too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan 
mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. ‘ I over¬ 
heard Jove, one day,’ said Silenus, ‘talking of destroying the 


MANNERS. 


495 


earth ; he said, it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, 
who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded 
each other. Minerva said, she hoped not; they were only 
ridiculous little creatures, with this odd circumstance, that 
they had a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen 
near; if you called them bad, they would appear so; if 
you called them good, they would appear so; and there was 
no one person or action among them, which would not puzzle 
her owl, much more all Olympus, to know whether it was 
fundamentally bad or good.’ 























































G I FTS. 


Gifts of one who loved me, — 
’T was high time they came; 
When he ceased to love me, 
Time they stopped for shame. 


TP 

















































• 




























































- 


























GIFTS. 


I T is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that 
the world owes the world more than the world can pay, 
and ought to go into chancery, and be sold. I do not think 
this general insolvency, which involves in some sort all the 
population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at 
Christmas and New Year, and other times, in bestowing gifts ; 
since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vex¬ 
atious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing. 
If, at any time, it comes into my head that a present is due 
from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the op¬ 
portunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; 
flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beau¬ 
ty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures 
contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary na¬ 
ture : they are like music heard out of a workhouse. Nature 
does not cocker us : we are children, not pets: she is not 
fond : everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after se¬ 
vere universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the 
frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell 
us that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by 
it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be 
courted. Something like that pleasure the flowers give us : 
what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed'? Fruits 
are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commod¬ 
ities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. 
If a man should send to me to come a hundred miles to visit 
him, and should set before me a basket of fine summer fruit, I 
should think there was some proportion between the labor and 
the reward. 

For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty 
every day, and one is glad when an imperative leaves him no 



500 


GIFTS. 


option, since if the man at the door have no shoes, you have 
not to consider whether you could procure him a paint-box. 
And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat bread, or drink 
water, in the house or out of doors, so it is always a great sat¬ 
isfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity does every¬ 
thing well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems 
heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and 
to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it 
be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office 
of punishing him. I can think of many parts I should prefer 
playing to that of the Furies. Next to things of necessity, the 
rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is, that we 
might convey to some person that which properly belonged to 
his character, and was easily associated with him in thought. 
But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part 
barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies 
for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must 
bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem ; the shep¬ 
herd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the 
sailor, coral and shells ; the painter, his picture; the girl, a 
handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, 
for it restores society in so far to the primary basis, when a 
man’s biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man’s 
wealth is an index of his merit. But it is a cold, lifeless busi¬ 
ness when you go to the shops to buy me something, which 
does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith’s. 
This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a 
false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, 
as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black mail. 

The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires 
careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to 
receive gifts. How dare you give them 1 We wish to be self- 
sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that 
feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive 
anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from our¬ 
selves ; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We 
sometimes hate the meat Avhich we eat, because there seems 
something of degrading dependence in living by it. 

“ Brother, if Jove to thee a present make, 

Be sure that from his hands thou nothing take.” 

We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign 
society, if it do not give us —besides earth and fire and water 
— opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of veneration. 


GIFTS. 


501 


He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either 
glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. 
Some violence, I think, is done, some degradation borne, when 
I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence 
is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my 
spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases 
me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should 
read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not 
him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver 
unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the 
waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. 
All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you 
give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your 
oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to 
deny 1 Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for 
gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the 
beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, 
not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to 
the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with 
the beneficiary, than with the anger of my lord Timon. For, 
the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually pun¬ 
ished by the total insensibility of the* obliged person. It is a 
great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning, 
from one who has had the ill luck to be served by you. It is 
a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor 
naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these 
gentlemen is that which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never 
thanks, and who says, “ Do not flatter your benefactors.” 

The reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there is 
no commensurability between a man and any gift. You can¬ 
not give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have 
served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. 
The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, com¬ 
pared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness 
to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and 
now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the 
benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. Besides, 
our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental 
and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments 
of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some 
shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, 
but must be content with an oblique one ; we seldom have the 
satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly 


502 


GIFTS. 


received. But rectitude scatters favors on every side with¬ 
out knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all 
people. 

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, 
which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not 
affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves 
indifferently. There are persons, from whom we always expect 
fairy-tokens; let us not cease to expect them. This is prerog¬ 
ative, and not to be limited by our municipal rules. For the 
rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. The 
best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but 
in fate. I find that I am not much to you ; you do not need 
me; you do not feel me ; then am I thrust out of doors, though 
you proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, 
but only likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to 
others by services, it proved an intellectual trick, — no more. 
They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But 
love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time. 


NATURE. 


The rounded world is fair to see, 

Nine times folded in mystery: 

Though baffled seers cannot impart 
The secret of its laboring heart, 

Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast, 
And all is clear from east to west. 

Spirit that lurks each form within 
Beckons to spirit of its kin; 

Self-kindled every atom glows, 

And hints the future which it owes. 






NATURE. 


T HERE are days which occur in this climate, at almost 
any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its 
perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth 
make a harmony, as if Nature would indulge her offspring; 
when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to 
desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we 
bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when every¬ 
thing that has life gives signs of satisfaction, and the cattle 
that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil 
thoughts. These halcyons may be looked for with a little 
more assurance in that pure October weather, which we distin¬ 
guish by the name of the Indian summer. The day, im¬ 
measurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide 
fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours seems lon¬ 
gevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely. 
At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is 
forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and 
foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the 
first step he makes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which 
shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. 
Here we find Nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every 
other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come 
to her. We have crept out of our close and crowded houses 
into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties 
daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape 
the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape 
the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to 
entrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like a per¬ 
petual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently 
reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of 
pines, hemlocks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on the ex- 
VOL. I. 22 



NATURE. 


506 

cited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to 
live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no 
history, or church, or state is interpolated on the divine sky 
and the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward 
into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by 
thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recol¬ 
lection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory 
obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in 
triumph by nature. 

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us. 
These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come 
to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious 
chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We never 
can part with it; the mind loves its old home; as water to 
our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, 
and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame : what health, 
what affinity! Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and 
brother when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this 
honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us 
out of our nonsense. Cities give not the human senses room 
enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the 
horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for 
our bath. There are all degrees of natural influence, from 
these quarantine powers of nature, up to her dearest and grav¬ 
est ministrations to the imagination and the soul. There is 
the bucket of cold water from the spring, the wood-fire to 
which the chilled traveller rushes for safety, — and there is 
the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle in na¬ 
ture, and draw our living as parasites from her roots and 
grains, and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which 
call us to solitude, and foretell the remotest future. The blue 
zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. I 
think, if we should be rapt away into all that we dream of 
heaven, and should converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper 
sky would be all that would remain of our furniture. 

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we 
have given heed to some natural object. The fall of snow¬ 
flakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; 
the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over 
plains ; the waving rye-field ; the mimic waving of acres of 
houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and ripple before 
the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes ; the 
musical steaming odorous south wind, which converts all trees 


NATURE. 


507 


to wind-harps ; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the 
flames; or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and 
faces in the sitting-room, — these are the music and pictures 
of the most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, 
with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I 
go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one 
stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personali¬ 
ties, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, 
and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too 
bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and 
probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we 
dip our hands in this painted element: our eyes are bathed in 
these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal 
revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and 
beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes 
itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these delicately 
emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signi¬ 
fy it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our inven¬ 
tion, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have 
early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel 
to this original beauty. I am overinstructed for my return. 
Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to 
toys. I am grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no 
longer live without elegance : but a countryman shall be my 
master of revels. He who knows the most, he who knows 
what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the 
plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, 
is the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of the 
world have called" in nature to their aid, can they reach the 
height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging- 
gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to 
back their faulty personality with these strong accessories. I 
do not wonder that the landed interest should be invincible in 
the state with these dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe and 
invite; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these 
tender and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We 
heard what the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his grove, 
his wine, and his company, but the provocation and point of 
the invitation came out of these beguiling stars. In their soft 
glances, I see what men strove to realize in some Versailles, or 
Paphos, or Ctesiphon. Indeed, it is the magical lights of the 
horizon, and the blue sky for the background, which save all 
our works of art, which were otherwise bawbles. When the 


508 


NATURE. 


rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they should 
consider the effect of men reputed to be the possessors of na¬ 
ture, on imaginative minds. Ah ! if the rich were rich as the 
poor fancy riches ! A boy hears a military band play on the 
field at night, and he has kings and queens, and famous chiv¬ 
alry palpably before him. He hears the echoes of a horn in a 
hill country, in the Notch Mountains, for example, which con¬ 
verts the mountains into an ^Eolian harp, and this supernat¬ 
ural tiralira restores to him the Dorian mythology, Apollo, 
Diana, and all divine hunters and huntresses. Can a musical 
note be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! To the poor young 
poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society; he is loyal; he 
respects the rich; they are rich for the sake of his imagina¬ 
tion ; how poor his fancy would be, if they were not rich ! 
That they have some high-fenced grove, which they call a park ! 
that they live in larger and better-garnished saloons than he 
has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the 
elegant, to watering-places, and to distant cities, are the ground¬ 
work from which he has delineated estates of romance, com¬ 
pared with which their actual possessions are shanties and 
paddocks. The muse herself betrays her son, and enhances 
the gifts of wealth and well-born beauty, by a radiation out of 
the air, and clouds, and forests that skirt the road, — a certain 
haughty favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a kind 
of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power of the air. 

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so 
easily, may not be always found, but the material landscape is 
never far off. We can find these enchantments without visit¬ 
ing the Como Lake, or the Madeira Islands. We exaggerate 
the praises of local scenery. In every landscape, the point of 
astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and 
that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of 
the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the 
brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnifi¬ 
cence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts 
of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning and 
evening will transfigure maples and alders. The difference 
between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great 
difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in 
any particular landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful 
under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised 
in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere. 

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on 


NATURE. 


509 


this topic, which schooimen called natura naturata, or nature 
passive. One can hardly speak directly of it without excess. 
It is as easy to broach in mixed companies what is called “ the 
subject of religion.” A susceptible person does not like to in¬ 
dulge his tastes in this kind, without the apology of some 
trivial necessity : he goes to see a wood-lot, or to look at the 
crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral from a remote locality, 
or he carries a fowling-piece or a fishing-rod. I suppose this 
shame must have a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is 
barren and unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than his 
brother of Broadway. Men are naturally hunters and in¬ 
quisitive of wood-craft, and I suppose that such a gazetteer 
as wood-cutters and Indians should furnish facts for, would 
take place in the most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the 
“ Wreaths ” and “ Flora’s chaplets ” of the bookshops ; yet 
ordinarily, whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or 
from whatever cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, 
they fall into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to 
Pan, who ought to be represented in the mythology as the 
most continent of gods. I would not be frivolous before the 
admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce 
the right of returning often to this old topic. The multitude of 
false churches accredits the true religion. Literature, poetry, 
science, are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, 
concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or 
incuriosity. Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is 
loved as the city of God, although, or rather because there is 
no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is underneath 
it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always 
seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human 
figures, that are as good as itself. If there were good men, 
there would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is 
in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is 
gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we 
turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that 
are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. The critics 
who complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of nature 
from the thing to be done, must consider that our hunting of 
the picturesque is inseparable from our protest against false 
society. Man is fallen; nature is erect and serves as a dif¬ 
ferential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of 
the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness 
and selfishness we are looking up to nature, but when we are 


510 


NATURE. 


convalescent, nature will look up to us. "We see the foaming 
brook with compunction : if our own life flowed with the 
right energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal 
sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun ana 
moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. As¬ 
tronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mes¬ 
merism (with intent to show where our spoons are gone); and 
anatomy and physiology becomes phrenology and palmistry. 

But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid 
on this topic, let us not longer omit our homage to the Ef¬ 
ficient Nature, natura naturans , the quick cause, before which 
all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works 
driven before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancients rep¬ 
resented nature by Proteus, a shepherd,) and in undescribable 
variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles 
and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the 
highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a 
shock or a leap. A little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that 
differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly cold poles of the 
earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass with¬ 
out violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of bound¬ 
less space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into 
the secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame- 
school measures, and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic 
schemes for her large style. We knew nothing rightly, for 
want of perspective. Now we learn what patient periods 
must round themselves before the rock is formed, then before 
the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated 
the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the 
remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to come in. How 
far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped ! how in¬ 
conceivably remote is man ! All duly arrive, and then race 
after race of men. It is a long way from granite to the 
oyster ; farther yet to Plato, and the preaching of the im¬ 
mortality of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as the 
first atom has two sides. 

Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and 
second secrets of nature : Motion and Rest. The whole code 
of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet 
of a ring. ‘The whirling bubble on the surface of a brook 
admits us to the secret of the mechanics of the sky. Every 
shell on the beach is a key to it. A little water made to ro¬ 
tate in a cup explains the formation oLthe simpler shells; the 


NATURE. 


511 


addition of matter from year to year, arrives at last at the 
most complex forms; and yet so poor is nature with all her 
craft, that, from the beginning to the end of the universe, she 
has but one stuff, — but one stuff with its two ends, to serve 
up all her dream-like variety. Compound it how she will, 
star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays 
the same properties. 

Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene 
her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend 
them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and 
living in the earth, and, at the same time, she arms and 
equips another animal to destroy it. Space exists to divide 
creatures; but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few 
feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direction 
is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for materials, 
and begins again with the first elements on the most advanced 
stage : otherwise, all goes to ruin. If we look at her work, 
we seem to catch a glance of a system in transition. Plants 
are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but 
they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are 
imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, 
rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and pro¬ 
bationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, 
having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are al¬ 
ready dissipated : the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; 
yet no doubt, when they come to consciousness, they too will 
curse and swear. Flowers so strictly belong to youth, that 
we adult men soon come to feel, that their beautiful genera¬ 
tions concern not us : w 7 e have had our day; now let the 
children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old 
bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness. 

Things are so strictly related, that according to the skill 
of the eye, from any one object the parts and properties of 
any other may be predicted. If we had eyes to see it, a bit 
of stone from the city wall would certify us of the necessity 
that man must exist, as readily as the city. That identity 
makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great intervals on 
our customary scale. We talk of deviations from natural life, 
as if artificial life were not also natural. The smoothest 
curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal na¬ 
ture, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its 
own ends, and is directly related, there amid essences and 
billetsdoux, to Himmaleh mountain-chains, and the axis of the 


512 


NATURE. 


globe. If we consider how much we are nature’s, we need 
not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic 
force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Nature, 
who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear 
too much of rural influences. The cool disengaged air of 
natural objects, makes them enviable to us, chafed and irri¬ 
table creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as 
grand as they, if we camp out and eat roots: but let us be 
men instead of woodchucks, and the oak and the elm shall 
gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets 
of silk. 

This guiding identity runs through all the surprises and 
contrasts of the piece, and characterizes every law. Man 
carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and 
chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the history of 
nature is charactered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet 
and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in natural 
science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before 
it was actually verified. A man does not tie his shoe without 
recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions of nature : 
moon, plant, gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and num¬ 
bers. Common sense know^s its own, and recognizes the fact 
at first sight in chemical experiment. The common sense of 
Franklin, Dalton, Davy, and Black, is the same common sense 
which made the arrangements which now it discovers. 

If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action 
runs also into organization. The astronomers said : ‘ Give ns 
matter, and a little motion, and we will construct the universe. 
It is not enough that we should have matter, -we must also 
have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass, and gen¬ 
erate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces. 
Once heave the ball from the hand, and we can show how all 
this mighty order grew.’ — ‘ A very unreasonable postulate,’ 
said the metaphysicians, ‘and a plain begging of the question. 
Could you not prevail to know the genesis of projection, as 
well as the continuation of it V Nature, meanwhile, had not 
waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed the 
impulse, and the balls rolled. It was no great affair, a mere 
push, but the astronomers were right in making much of it, 
for there is no end to the consequences of the act. That 
famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls 
of the system, and through every atom of every ball, through 
all the races of creatures, and through the history and per- 


NATURE. 


513 


formances of every individual. Exaggeration is in the course 
of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, 
without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given 
the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to 
every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its 
proper path, a shove to put it on its way ; in every instance, 
a slight generosity, a drop too much. Without electricity the 
air would rot, and without this violence of direction, which 
men and women have, without a spice of bigot and fanatic, no 
excitement, no efficiency. We aim above the mark, to hit the 
mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. 
And when now and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed 
man, who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to 
play, but blabs the secret; — how then 1 is the bird flown h 
0 no, the wary Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, of 
lordlier youths, with a little more excess of direction to hold 
them fast to their several aim ; makes them a little wrong¬ 
headed in that direction in which they are Tightest, and on 
goes the game again with new whirl, for a generation or two 
more. The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, 
commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to 
compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or 
a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread-dog, indi¬ 
vidualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with 
every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, 
which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. 
But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled 
lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the 
symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes 
and exertions, — an end of the first importance, vhich could 
not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. This 
glitter, this opaline lustre plays round the top of every toy to 
his eye, to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. 
We are made alive and kept alive by the same arts. Let the 
stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of 
livin", but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. 
The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the 
flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth 
w r ith a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands 
may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens 
may live to maturity, that, at least, one may replace the 
parent. All things betray the same calculated profusion. The 
excess of fear with which the animal frame is hedged round, 
22 * G O’ 


514 


NATURE. 


shrinking from cold, starting at sight of a snake, or at a sud¬ 
den noise, protects us, through a multitude of groundless 
alarms, from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks 
in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no pro¬ 
spective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own end, 
namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race. 

But the craft with which the world is made, runs also into 
the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane ; each 
has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination 
of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to 
some one point which nature had taken to heart. Great 
causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is re¬ 
duced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the 
contention is ever hottest on minor matters. Not less re¬ 
markable is the overfaith of each man in the importance of 
what he has to do or say. The poet, the prophet, has a high¬ 
er value for what he utters than any hearer, and therefore it 
gets spoken. The strong, self-complacent Luther declares 
with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that “ God himself can¬ 
not do without wise men.” Jacob Behmen and George Fox 
betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial 
tracts, and James Naylor once suffered himself to be wor¬ 
shipped as the Christ. Each prophet comes presently to 
identify himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and 
shoes sacred. However this may discredit such persons with 
the judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, 
pungency, and publicity to their words. A similar experience 
is not infrequent in private life. Each young and ardent per¬ 
son writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and 
penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages thus writ¬ 
ten are, to him, burning and fragrant : he reads them on his 
knees by midnight and by the morning star; he wets them 
with his tears : they are sacred ; too good for the world, and 
hardly yet to be shown to the dearest friend. This is the 
man-child that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates 
in the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet been cut. After 
some time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to 
this hallowed experience, and with hesitation, yet with firm' 
ness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his 
eyes 1 The friend coldly turns them over, and passes from 
the writing to conversation, with easy transition, which strikes 
the other party with astonishment and vexation. He cannot 
suspect the writing itself. Hays and nights of fervid life, of 


NATURE. 


515 


communion with angels of darkness and of light, have engraved 
their shadowy characters on that tear-stained book. He sus¬ 
pects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. Is there 
then no friend I He cannot yet credit that one may have 
impressive experience, and yet may not know how to put his 
private fact into literature; and perhaps the discovery that 
wisdom has other tongues and ministers than we, that though 
we should hold our peace, the truth would not the less be 
spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our zeal. A 
man can only speak, so long as he does not feel his speech to 
be partial and inadequate. It is partial, but he does not see 
it to be so, whilst he utters it. As soon as he is released from 
the instinctive and particular, and sees its partiality, he shuts 
his mouth in disgust. For, no man can write anything, who 
does not think that what he writes is for the time the history 
of the world ; or do anything well, who does not esteem his 
work to be of importance. My work may be of none, but I 
must not think it of none, or I shall not do it with impunity. 

In like manner, there is throughout nature something mock¬ 
ing, something that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere, 
keeps no faith with us. All promise outruns the performance. 
We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospec¬ 
tive of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and 
final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not do¬ 
mesticated. Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to drink; 
but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, Jeave us 
hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is the same 
with all our arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, 
our language itself, are not satisfactions, hut suggestions. The 
hunger for wealth, which reduces the planet to a garden, fools 
the eager pursuer. What is the end sought 'l Plainly to se¬ 
cure the ends of good sense and beauty, from the intrusion of 
deformity or vulgarity of any kind. But what an operose 
method ! What a train of means to secure a little conversa¬ 
tion ! This palace of brick and stone, these servants, this 
kitchen, these stables, horses and equipage, this bank-stock, 
and file of mortgages; trade to all the world, country-house 
and cottage by the water-side, all for a little conversation, 
high, clear, and spiritual! Could it not be had as well by 
beggars on the highway I No, all these things came from suc¬ 
cessive efforts of these beggars to remove friction from the 
wheels of life, and give opportunity. Conversation, character, 
were the avowed ends 3 wealth was good as it appeased the 


516 


NATURE. 


animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced the creak¬ 
ing door, brought friends together in a warm and quiet room, 
and kept the children and the dinner-table in a different apart¬ 
ment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the ends; but it was 
known that men of thought and virtue sometimes had the 
headache, or wet feet, or could lose good time whilst the room 
was getting warm in winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions 
necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main attention 
has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost 
sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That 
is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and 
now the governments generally of the world, are cities and 
governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor 
men , that is, men who would be rich ; this is the ridicule of 
the class, that they arrive with pains and sweat and fury no¬ 
where ; when all is done, it is for nothing. They are like one 
who has interrupted the conversation of a company to make 
his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say. The 
appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, 
of aimless nations. Were the ends of nature so great and co¬ 
gent, as to exact this immense sacrifice of men 1 

Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be 
expected, a similar effect on the eye from the face of external 
nature. There is in woods and waters a certain enticement 
and flattery, together with a failure to yield a present satisfac¬ 
tion. This disappointment is felt in every landscape. I have 
seen thfe softness and beauty of the summer clouds floating 
feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, their height and 
privilege of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much the 
drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to some pavil¬ 
ions and gardens of festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy : 
but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. The 
pine-tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, does not 
seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. This or this is 
but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo of the triumph that 
has passed by, and is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, 
perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the 
field, then in the adjacent woods. The present object shall 
give you this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which 
has just gone by. What splendid distance, what recesses of 
ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sunset! But who can go 
where they are, or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon 1 
Off they fall from the round world for ever and ever. It is the 


NATURE. 


517 


same among the men and women, as among the silent trees; 
always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and 
satisfaction. Is it, that beauty can never be grasped 1 in per¬ 
sons and in landscape is equally inaccessible 1 The accepted 
and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden 
in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued 
her as a star; she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a 
one as he. 

What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that 
first projectile impulse, of this flattery and balking of so many 
well-meaning creatures 1 Must we not suppose somewhere in 
the universe a slight treachery and derision 1 Are we not en¬ 
gaged to a serious resentment of this use that is made of us 1 
Are we tickled trout, and fools of nature 1 One look at the 
face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes 
us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts 
itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. 
Her secret is untold. Many and many an (Edipus arrives ; he 
has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. x\las ! the same 
sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his 
lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the 
deep, but no archangel’s wing was yet strong enough to follow 
it, and report of the return of the curve. But it also appears, 
that our actions are seconded and disposed to greater conclu¬ 
sions than we designed. We are escorted on every hand 
through life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies 
in wait for us. We cannot bandy words with nature, or deal 
with her as we deal with persons. If we measure our indi¬ 
vidual forces against hers, we may easily feel as if we were the 
sport of an insuperable destiny. But if, instead of identify¬ 
ing ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the work¬ 
man streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morn¬ 
ing dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of 
gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life, pre-existing 
within us in their highest form. 

The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the 
chain of causes occasions us, results from looking too much at 
one condition of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is 
never taken from the wheel. Wherever the impulse exceeds, 
the Rest or Identity insinuates its compensation. All over the 
wide fields of earth grows the prunella or self-heal. After 
every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours; 
and though we are always engaged with particulars, and often 


518 


NATURE. 


enslaved to \hem, we bring with us to every experiment the 
innate universal laws. These, while they exist in the mind as 
ideas, stand around us in nature forever embodied, a present 
sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. Our servitude 
to particulars betrays us into a hundred foolish expectations. 
We anticipate a new era from the invention of a locomotive, 
or a balloon; the new engine brings with it the old checks. 
They say that by electro-magnetism, your salad shall be grown 
from the seed, whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner ; it is a 
symbol of our modern aims and endeavors, — of our condensa¬ 
tion and acceleration of objects : but nothing is gained : na¬ 
ture cannot be cheated : man’s life is but seventy salads long, 
grow they swift or grow they slow. In these checks and im¬ 
possibilities, however, we find our advantage, not less than in 
the impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are on 
that side. And the knowledge that we traverse the whole 
scale of being, from the centre to the poles of nature, and have 
some stake in every possibility, lends that sublime lustre to 
death, which philosophy and religion have too outwardly and 
literally striven to express in the popular doctrine of the im¬ 
mortality of the soul. The reality is more excellent than the 
report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball. The 
divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the incar¬ 
nation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice be¬ 
comes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and 
the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of 
free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence 
on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic or organ¬ 
ized. Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, 
speaks to man impersonated. That power which does not 
respect quantity, which makes the whole and the particle its 
equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, and distils 
its essence into every drop' of rain. Every moment instructs, 
and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form. It 
has been poured into us as blood ; it convulsed us as pain ; it 
slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy 
days, or in days of cheerful labor: we did not guess its es¬ 
sence, until after a long time. 


POLITICS. 


-v 


Gold and iron are good 
To buy iron and gold; 

All earth’s fleece and food 
For their like are sold. 

Hinted Merlin wise, 

Proved .Napoleon great,— 

Nor kind nor coinage buys 
Aught above its rate., 

Fear, Craft, and Avarice 
Cannot rear a State. 

Out of dust to build 
What is more than dust, — 

Walls Amphion piled 
Phoebus stablish must. 

When the Muses nine 
With the Virtues meet, 

Find to their design 
An Atlantic seat, 

By green orchard boughs 
Fended from the heat, 

Where the statesman ploughs 
Furrow for the wheat ; 

When the Church is social worth. 
When the state-house is the hearth, 
Then the perfect State is come, 

The republican at home. 





POLITICS. 


I N dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its 
institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before 
we were born : that they are not superior to the citizen : that 
every one of them was once the act of a single man : every 
law and usage was a man’s expedient to meet a particular 
case : that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make 
as good; we may make better. Society is an illusion to the 
young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain 
names, men, and institutions, rooted like oak-trees to the 
centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. 
But the old statesman knows that society is fluid ; there are 
no such roots and centres ; but any particle may suddenly be¬ 
come the centre of the movement, and compel the system to 
gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, 
or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like 
Plato, or Paul, does forever. But politics rest on necessary 
foundations, and cannot be treated with levity. Republics 
abound in young civilians, who believe that the laws make the 
city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of 
living, and cfFnployments of the population, that commerce, 
education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any 
measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, 
if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But 
the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which 
perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not 
lead, the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest 
usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on 
Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government 
which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in 
the population which permits it. The law is only a memoran¬ 
dum. We are superstitious, and esteem the statute some- 



522 


POLITICS. 


what : so much life as it has in the character of living men, 
is its force. The statute stands there to say, yesterday we 
agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article to-day 1 Our 
statute is a currency, which we stamp with our own portrait: 
it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time will 
return to the mint. Nature is not democratic, nor limited- 
monarchical, but despotic, and will not be fooled or abated of 
any jot of her authority, by the pertest of her sons ; and as 
fast as the public mind is opened to more intelligence, the code 
is seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks not articulate¬ 
ly, and must be made to. Meantime the education of the 
general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and sim¬ 
ple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and 
prays, and paints to-day, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, 
shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be 
carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and 
war, and then shall he triumphant law and establishment for 
a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers 
and pictures. The history of the State sketches in coarse out¬ 
line the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the 
delicacy of culture and of aspiration. 

The theory of politics, which has possessed the mind of men, 
and which they have expressed the best they could in their 
laws and in their revolutions, considers persons and property 
as the two objects for whose protection government exists. 
Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of being identical 
in nature. This interest, of course, with its whole power de¬ 
mands a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are 
equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in prop¬ 
erty are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and anoth¬ 
er owns a county. This accident, depending, primarily, on the 
skill and virtue of the parties, of which there is every degree, 
and secondarily, on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights, 
of course, are unequal. Personal rights, universally the same, 
demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: 
property demands a government framed on the ratio of owners 
and of owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds, wishes 
them looked after by an officer on the frontiers, lest the Mid- 
ianites shall drive them off, and pays a tax to that end. 
Jacob has no flocks or herds, and no fear of the Midianites, 
and pays no tax to the officer. It seemed fit that Laban and 
Jacob should have equal rights to elect the officer, who is to 
defend their persons, but that Laban, and not Jacob, should 


POLITICS. 


523 


elect the officer who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And, 
if question arise whether additional officers or watch-towers 
should be provided, must not Laban and Isaac, and those who 
must sell part of their herds to buy protection for the rest, 
judge better of this, and with more right, than Jacob, who, 
because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not 
his own 1 

In the earliest society the proprietors made their own 
wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in the direct 
w T ay, no other opinion would arise in any equitable community, 
than that property should make the law for property, and 
persons the law for persons. 

But property passes through donation or inheritance to 
those who do not create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as 
really the new owner’s, as labor made it the first owner’s: in 
the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an ownership, 
which will be valid in each man’s view according to the esti¬ 
mate w r hich he sets on the public tranquillity. 

It was not, however, found easy to embody the readily ad¬ 
mitted principle, that property should make law for property, 
and persons for persons: since persons and property mixed 
themselves in every transaction. At last it seemed settled, 
that the rightful distinction was, that the proprietors should 
have more elective franchise than non-proprietors, on the 
Spartan principle of “ calling that which is just, equal; not 
that which is equal, just.” 

That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared 
in former times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether 
too much weight had not been allowed in the laws to prop¬ 
erty, and such a structure given to our usages, as allowed the 
rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them poor; but 
mainly, because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure 
and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution of property, 
on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on per¬ 
sons deteriorating and degrading; that truly, the only inter¬ 
est for the consideration of the State is persons ; that prop¬ 
erty will always follow^ persons; that the highest end of gov¬ 
ernment is the culture of men: and if men can be educated, 
the institutions will share their improvement, and the moral 
sentiment w T ill write the law of the land. 

If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the 
peril is less when we take note of our natural defences. We 
are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magis- 


524 


POLITICS. 


trates as we commonly elect. Society always consists, in 
greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who 
have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, 
die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. These believe their 
own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. With such 
an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run 
to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the folly 
and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their 
laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with. 
Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is 
planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe 
it, unless the chances are a hundred to one that he will cut 
and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property must 
and will have their just sway. They exert their power, as 
steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth 
never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, 
convert it to gas ; it will always weigh a pound : it will al¬ 
ways attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue of one 
pound weight; — and the attributes of a person, his wit and 
his moral energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguish¬ 
ing tyranny, their proper force, — if not overtly, then covert¬ 
ly ; if not for the law, then against it; if not wholesomely, 
then poisonously; with right, or by might. 

The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, 
as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under 
the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multi¬ 
tudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers 
of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of 
men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily 
confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant 
actions, out of all proportion to their means ; as, the Greeks, 
the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have 
done. 

In like manner, to every particle of property belongs its 
own attraction. A cent is the representative of a certain 
quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the 
necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth, so 
much bread, so much water, so much land. The law may do 
what it will with the owner of property, its just power will 
still attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say, 
that all shall have power except the owners of property; they 
shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the prop¬ 
erty will, year after year, write every statute that respects 


rOLITICS. 


525 


property. The non-proprietor will be the scribe of the pro¬ 
prietor. What the owners wish to do, the whole power of 
property will do, either through the law, or else in defiance of 
it. Of course, J speak of all the property, not merely of the 
great estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently hap¬ 
pens, it is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their 
accumulations. Every man owns something, if it is only a 
cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that property 
to dispose of. 

The same necessity which secures the rights of person and 
property against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, de¬ 
termines the form and methods of governing, which are 
proper to each nation, and to its habit of thought, and no¬ 
wise transferable to other states of society. In this country, 
we are very vain of our political institutions, which are sin¬ 
gular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living 
men, from the character and condition of the people, which 
they still express with sufficient fidelity, — and we ostenta¬ 
tiously prefer them to any other in history. They are not 
better, but only fitter for us. We may be wise in asserting 
the advantage in modern times of the democratic form, but 
to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the 
monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is 
better for us, because the religious sentiment of the present 
time accords better with it. Born democrats, who are nowise 
qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living 
in the monarchical idea, was also relatively right. But our 
institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, 
have not any exemption from the practical defects which have 
discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good 
men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on gov¬ 
ernment can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the 
w r ord politic, which now for ages has signified cunning , inti¬ 
mating that the State is a trick 1 

The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse ap¬ 
pear in the parties into which each State divides itself, of oppo¬ 
nents and defenders of the administration of the government. 
Parties are also founded on instincts, and have better guides 
to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders. 
They have nothing perverse in their origin, but rudely mark 
some real and lasting relation. We might as wisely reprove 
the east wfind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, 
for the most part, could give no account of their position, but 


526 


POLITICS. 


stand for the defence of those interests in which they find 
themselves. Our quarrel with them begins, when they quit 
this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and, 
obeying personal considerations, throw themselves into the 
maintenance and defence of points, nowise belonging to their 
system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. 
Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot 
extend the same charity to their leaders. They reap the re¬ 
wards of the docility and zeal of the masses which they direct. 
Ordinarily, our parties are parties of circumstance, and not of 
principle ; as, the planting interest in conflict with the com¬ 
mercial ; the party of capitalists, and that of operatives ; par¬ 
ties which are identical in their moral character, and which can 
easily change ground wdth each other, in the support of many 
of their measures. Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or 
the party of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of 
slavery, of abolition of capital punishment, degenerate into 
personalities, or would inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our 
leading parties in this country (which may be cited as a fair 
specimen of these societies of opinion) is, that they do not 
plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to which 
they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in 
the carrying of some local and momentary measure, nowise 
useful to the commonwealth. Of the two great parties, 
which, at this hour, almost share the nation between them, I 
should say, that, one has the best cause, and the other contains 
the best men. The philosopher, the poet, or the religious 
man will, of course, wish to cast his vote with the democrat, 
for free-trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruel¬ 
ties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the 
access of the young and the poor to the sources of w r ealth and 
power. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the so-called 
popular party propose to him as representatives of these liber¬ 
alities. They have not at heart the ends which give to the 
name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit 
of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless ; it is 
not loving ; it has no ulterior and divine ends ; but is destruc¬ 
tive only out of hatred and selfishness. On the other side, the 
conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and 
cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defen¬ 
sive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real 
good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it 
does not build nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, 


POLITICS. 


527 


nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate 
the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immi¬ 
grant. From neither party, when in power, has the world any 
benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commen¬ 
surate with the resources of the nation. 

I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are 
not at the mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of 
ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cherished, 
as the children of the convicts at Botany Bay are found to 
have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. Citizens 
of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions 
lapsing into anarchy; and the older and more cautious among 
ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with some terror 
at our turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of 
construing the Constitution, and in the despotism of public 
opinion, we have no anchor; and one foreign observer thinks 
he has found the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among 
us ; and another thinks he has found it in our Calvinism. 
Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when 
he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, “ that a mon¬ 
archy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes 
strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a 
raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in 
water.” No forms can have any dangerous importance, whilst 
we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no differ¬ 
ence how many tons’ weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, 
so long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Aug¬ 
ment the mass a thousand-fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as 
long as reaction is equal to action. The fact of two poles, of 
two forces, centripetal and cenjtrifugal, is universal, and each 
force by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty 
develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening 
law and decoriim, stupefies conscience. ‘ Lynch-law ’ prevails 
only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in 
the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency ; everybody’s 
interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice 
satisfies all. 

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which 
shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in 
them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, 
and an abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript 
of the common conscience. Governments have their origin 
in the moral identity of men. Reason for one is seen to be 


528 


POLITICS. 


reason for another, and for every other. There is a middle 
measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so many, or 
so resolute for their own. Every man finds a sanction for his 
simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which 
he calls Truth and Holiness. In these decisions all the citi¬ 
zens find a perfect agreement, and only in these ; not in what 
is good to eat, good to wear, good use of time, or what amount 
of land, or of public aid, each is entitled to claim. This truth 
and justice men presently endeavor to make application of, to 
the measuring of land, the apportionment of service, the pro¬ 
tection of life and property. Their first endeavors, no doubt, 
are very awkward. Yet absolute right is the first governor; 
or, every government is an impure theocracy. The idea, after 
which each community is aiming to make and mend its law, 
is the will of the wise man. The wise man it cannot find in 
nature, and it makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his 
government by contrivance ; as, by causing the entire people 
to give their voices on every measure ; or, by a double choice 
to get the representation of the whole ; or, by a selection of 
the best citizens ; or, to secure the advantages of efficiency 
and internal peace, by confiding the government to one, who 
may himself select his agents. All forms of government sym¬ 
bolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties and 
independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect 
where there is only one man. 

Every man’s nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of 
the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong is their 
right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and 
abstain from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall often agree 
in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But 
whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for 
me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the 
truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much 
more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express ade¬ 
quately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie 
both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the as¬ 
sumption : it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by 
force. This undertaking for another is the blunder which 
stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. 
It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite 
so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference be¬ 
tween my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going 
to make somebody else act after my views : but when a quar- 


POLITICS. 


529 


ter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do I 
may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see’so 
clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public 
ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For, any 
laws but those which men make for themselves are laughable. 
If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one 
thought, and see that things are thus or thus, that perception 
is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if 
without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his 
plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he 
will never obey me. This is the history of governments, — 
one man does something which is to bind another. A man who 
cannot be acquainted with me taxes me ; looking from afar at 
me, ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that 
whimsical end, not as I, but as he, happens to fancy. Behold 
the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay 
the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Every¬ 
where they think they get their money’s worth, except for these. 

Hence, the less government we have the better, — the few¬ 
er laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this 
abuse of formal government, is, the influence of private charac¬ 
ter, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the prin¬ 
cipal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, 
of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a 
shabby imitation. That w T hich all things tend to educe, 
which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form 
and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach 
unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, 
the State exists ; and with the appearance of the wise man, 
the State expires. The appearance of character makes the 
State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no 
army, fort, or navy, — he loves men too well; no bribe, or 
feast, or palace, to draw friends to him ; no vantage-ground, 
no favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has 
not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute- 
book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value ; no 
road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the 
life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his 
eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to 
draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not hus¬ 
band and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic 
life. His relation to men is angelic ; his memory is myrrh to 
them ; his presence, frankincense and flowers. 

VOL. i. 23 


II H 


530 


POLITICS. 


We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet 
only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our bar¬ 
barous society the influence of character is in its infancy. As 
a political power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble all 
rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected. 
Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it; the Annual Register is si¬ 
lent ; in the Conversations’ Lexicon, it is not set down ; the 
President’s Message, the Queen’s Speech, have not mentioned 
it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which genius 
and piety throw into the world, alters the world. The gladia¬ 
tors in the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of 
force and simulation, the presence of worth. I think the very 
strife of trade and ambition are confession of this divinity; 
and successes in those fields are the poor amends, the fig-leaf 
with which the-shamed soul attempts to hide its nakedness. I 
find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is because 
we know how much is due from us, that we are impatient to 
show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. We are 
haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur of char¬ 
acter, and are false to it. But each of us has some talent, can 
do somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or 
lucrative. That we do, as an apology to others and to our¬ 
selves, for not reaching the mark of a good and equal life. 
But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of 
our companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does 
not smooth our own brow, or give us the tranquillity of the 
strong when we walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Our 
talent is a sort of expiation, and we are constrained to reflect 
on our splendid moment, with a certain humiliation, as some¬ 
what too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression 
of our permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet in 
society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, 4 1 
am not all here.’ Senators and presidents have climbed so 
high with pain enough, not because they think the place 
specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to 
vindicate their manhood in our -eyes. This conspicuous chair 
is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, 
hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class 
of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail : 
climb they must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich- 
natured that he could enter into strict relations with the best 
persons, and make life serene around him by the dignity and 
sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the 


POLITICS. 


531 


favor of the caucus and the press, and covet relations so hol¬ 
low and pompous, as those of a politician 1 Surely nobody 
would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere. 

The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-govern¬ 
ment, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and 
penalties of his own constitution, which work with more ener¬ 
gy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints. 
The movement in this direction has been very marked in mod¬ 
ern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the 
nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the re- 
volters ; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted 
by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the indi¬ 
vidual from all party, and unites him, at the same time, to the 
race. It promises a recognition of higher rights than those of 
personal freedom, or the security of property. A man has a 
right to be employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to be revered. 
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been 
tried. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into 
confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear 
his part in certain social conventions ; nor doubt that roads can 
be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when 
the government of force is at an end. Are our methods now 
so excellent that all competition is hopeless 1 could not a na¬ 
tion of friends even devise better ways 1 On the other hand, 
let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a 
premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force. 
For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior 
to our will, it stands thus ; there will always be a government 
of force, where men are selfish; and when they are pure 
enough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough 
to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, 
of commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and 
libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be answered. 

We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling 
tribute to governments founded on force. There is not, among 
the most religious and instructed men of the most religious 
and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a suf¬ 
ficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that so¬ 
ciety can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as 
the solar system ; or that the private citizen might be reason¬ 
able, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confis¬ 
cation. What is strange too, there never was in any man 
sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with 


532 


POLITICS. 


the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of 
right and love. All those who have pretended this design 
have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some man¬ 
ner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind 
a single human being v T ho has steadily denied the authority of 
the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such 
designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not en¬ 
tertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual 
who exhibits them dare to think them practicable, he disgusts 
scholars and churchmen; and men of talent, and women of 
superior sentiments, cannot hide their contempt. Not the less 
does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with sugges¬ 
tions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men, — if indeed 
I can speak in the plural number, — more exactly, I will say, 
I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight 
of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impos¬ 
sible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards 
each other the grandest and simplest sentiments, as well as a 
knot of friends, or a pair of lovers. 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST 


♦ 


In counties? upward-striving waves 
The moon-drawn tide-wave strives: 
In thousand far-transplanted grafts 
The parent fruit survives; 

So, in the new-born millions, 

The perfect Adam lives. 

Not less are summer mornings dear 
To every child they wake, 

And each with novel life his sphere 
Fills for his proper sake. 
























































NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


I CANNOT often enough say that a man is only a relative 
and representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but 
far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly 
and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not 
find it. Could any man conduct into me the pure stream of 
that which he pretends to be! Long afterwards, I find that 
quality elsewhere which he promised me. The genius of the 
Platonists is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particu¬ 
lars of it can I detach from all their books. The man momen¬ 
tarily stands for the thought, but will not bear examination ; 
and a society of men will cursorily represent well enough a 
certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry or beauty 
of manners, but separate them, and there is no gentleman and 
no lady in the group. The least hint sets us on the pursuit 
of a character, which no man realizes. We have such exorbi¬ 
tant eyes, that on seeing the smallest arc, we complete the 
curve, and when the curtain is lifted from the diagram which 
it seemed to veil, w’e are vexed to find that no more was drawn, 
than just that fragment of an arc which we first beheld. We 
are greatly too liberal in our construction of each other’s facul¬ 
ty and promise. Exactly what the parties have already done, 
they shall do again ; but that which we inferred from their 
nature and inception, they will not do. That is in nature, but 
not in them. That happens in the w’orld, which we often wit¬ 
ness in a public debate. Each of the speakers expresses him¬ 
self imperfectly : no one of them hears much that another 
says, such is the preoccupation of mind of each ; and the audi¬ 
ence, who have only to hear and not to speak, judge very wise¬ 
ly and superiorly how wrongheaded and unskilful is each of 
the debaters to his own affair. Great men or men of great 
gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never. When 



536 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


I meet a pure intellectual force, or a generosity of affection, I 
believe, here then is man : and am presently mortified by the 
discovery, that this h dividual is no more available to his own 
or to the i his companions; because the 

power whi ' ot supported by the total 

symphony • ■. All persons exist to society by some 

shining trait ■ a; or utility, which tli 1 1 ;iv«•. "We bor¬ 
row the proportions of the man from that < a iui . and 

finish the portrait symmetrically; which i^ f : i> ;• ihe rest 
of his body is small or deformed. I < i a\ ; • m who 

makes a good public appearance, and »■< Ard then. • r 1 1 • per¬ 
fection of his private character, on whi* h ; ’ is bas^ I: but 
he has no private character. He is a id cloak or lay- 

figure for holidays. All our poets, her* . d saints fail ut¬ 
terly in some one or in many parts to sai d our idea, fail to 
draw our spontaneous interest, nnd so leave us without any 
hope of realization but irt i future. Our exaggeration 

of all fine characters i the fact that we identify 

each in turn with the > -to are no such men as w T e 

fable; no Jesus, nor d ■ Ofiesar, nor Angelo, nor 

Washington, such as s . We consecrate a great 

deal of nonsense, beeam * d b} r great men. There 

is none without his foible, I A lieve if an angel should 
come to chant the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too 
much gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do 
some precious atrocity. It is bad enough that our geniuses 
cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit 
for society, who has fine traits. He is admired at a distance, 
but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple. The 
men of fine parts protect themselves by solitude, or by cour¬ 
tesy, or by satire, or by an acid worldly manner, each concealing, 
as he best can, his incapacity for useful association, but they 
want either love or self-reliance. 

Our native love of reality joins with this experience to teach 
us a little reserve, and to dissuade a too sudden surrender to 
the brilliant qualities of persons. Young people admire tal¬ 
ents or particular excellences; as we grow older, w T e value 
total powers and effects, as, the impression, the quality, the 
spirit of men and things. The genius is all. The man, — it 
is his system: we do not try a solitary word or act, but his 
habit. The acts w 7 hich you praise, I praise not, since they are 
departures from his faith, and are mere compliances. The 
magnetism which arranges tribes and races in one polarity is 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


537 


alone to be respected; the men are steel-filings. Yet we un¬ 
justly select a particle, and say, ‘ 0 steel-filing number one ! 
what heart-drawings I feel to thee! what prodigious virtues 
are these of thine ! how constitutional to thee, and incommu¬ 
nicable ! ’ Whilst we speak, the loadstone is withdrawn; down 
falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our 
mummery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for universals; 
for the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and its 
persons are poor empirical pretensions. A personal influence 
is an ignis fatnus . If they say, it is great, it is great; if they 
say, it is small, it is small; you see it, and you see it not, by 
turns; it borrows all-its size from the momentary estimation 
of the speakers : the Will-of-the-wisp vanishes if you go too 
near, vanishes if you go too far, and only blazes at one angle. 
Who can tell if Washington be a great man, or no 1 Who can 
tell if Franklin be 1 Yes, or any but the twelve, or six, or 
three great gods of fame 1 And they, too, loom and fade be¬ 
fore the eternal. 

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, 
having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic. 
We adjust our instrument for general observation, and sweep 
the heavens as easily as we pick out a single figure in the 
terrestrial landscape. We are practically skilful in detecting 
elements, for which we have no place in our theory, and no 
name. Thus we are very sensible of an atmospheric influence 
in men and in bodies of men, not accounted for in an arith¬ 
metical addition of all their measurable properties. There is 
a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numer¬ 
ical citizens, but which characterizes the society. England, 
strong, punctual, practical, well-spoken England, I should not 
find, if I should go to the island to seek it. In the parlia¬ 
ment, in the play-house, at dinner-tables, I might see a great 
number of rich, ignorant, book-read, conventional, proud 
men, — many old women, — and not anywhere the English¬ 
man who made the good speeches, combined the accurate 
engines, and did the bold and nervous deeds. It is even 
worse in America, where, from the intellectual quickness of 
the race, the genius of the country is more splendid in its 
promise, and more slight in its performance. Webster cannot 
do the work of Webster. We conceive distinctly enough the 
French, the Spanish, the German genius, and it is not the less 
real, that perhaps we should not meet in either of those 
nations, a single individual who corresponded with the type. 

23 * -- 


538 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


We infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the 
language, which is a sort of monument, to which each forcible 
individual in a course of many hundred years has contributed 
a stone. And, universally, a good example of this social force 
is the veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. In 
any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made 
with safety to the sentiments, which the language of the peo¬ 
ple expresses. Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections con¬ 
vey the public sense with more purity and precision than the 
wisest individual. 

In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists 
had a good deal of reason. General ideas are essences. They 
are our gods : they round and ennoble the most partial and 
sordid way of living. Our proclivity to details cannot quite 
degrade our life, and divest it of poetry. The day-laborer is 
reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is 
saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the 
hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, 
astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature, play through 
his mind. Money, which represents the prose of life, and 
which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, 
in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. Property keeps 
the accounts of the world, and is alwa} T s moral. The prop¬ 
erty will be found where the labor, the wisdom, and the virtue 
have been in nations, in classes, and (the whole life-time con¬ 
sidered, with the compensations) in the individual also. How 
wise the world appears, when the laws and usages of nations 
are largely detailed, and the completeness of the municipal 
system is considered! Nothing is left out. If you go into 
the markets, and the custom-houses, the insurers’ and notaries’ 
offices, the offices of sealers of weights and measures, of in¬ 
spection of provisions, — it will appear as if one man had 
made it all. Wherever you go, a wit like your own has been 
before you, and has realized its thought. The Eleusinian 
mysteries, the Egyptian architecture, the Indian astronomy, 
the Greek sculpture, show that there always were seeing and 
knowing men in the planet. The world is full of masonic 
ties, of guilds, of secret and public legions of honor; that of 
scholars, for example; and that of gentlemen fraternizing 
with the upper class of every country and every culture. 

I am very much struck in literature by the appearance 
that one person wrote all the books; as if the editor of a 
journal planted his body of reporters in different parts of the 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


539 


field of action, and relieved some by others from time to time ; 
but there is such equality and identity both of judgment and 
point of view in the narrative, that it is plainly the work of 
one all-seeing, all-hearing gentleman. I looked into Pope’s 
Odyssey yesterday: it is as correct and elegant after our 
canon of to-day, as if it were newly written. The modernness 
of all good books seems to give me an existence as wide as 
man. What is well done, I feel as if I did; what is ill done, 

I reck not of. Shakespeare’s passages of passion (for exam¬ 
ple, in Lear and Hamlet) are in the very dialect of the pres¬ 
ent year. I am faithful again to the whole over the members 
in my use of books. I find the most pleasure in reading a 
book in a manner least flattering to the author. I read Pro- 
clus, and sometimes Plato, as I might read a dictionary, for a 
mechanical help to the fancy and the imagination. I read for 
the lustres, as if one should use a fine picture in a chromatic 
experiment, for its rich colors. ’T is not Proclus, but a piece 
of nature and fate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see 
the author’s author, than himself. A higher pleasure of the 
same kind I found lately at a concert, where I went to hear 
Handel’s Messiah. As the master overpowered the littleness 
and incapableness of the performers, and made them con¬ 
ductors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe what ef¬ 
forts nature was making through so many hoarse, wooden, 
and imperfect persons, to produce beautiful voices, fluid and 
soul-guided men and women. The genius of nature was para¬ 
mount at the oratorio. 

This preference of the genius to the parts is the secret of 
that deification of art, which is found in all superior minds. 
Art, in the artist, is proportion, or a habitual respect to the 
whole by an eye loving beauty in details. And the wonder 
and charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes. 
Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no 
one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are en¬ 
cumbered with personality, and talk too much. In modern 
sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous ; 
the artist works here and there, and at all points, adding and 
adding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought. Beauti¬ 
ful details we must have, or no artist; but they must be means 
and never other. The eye must not lose sight for a moment 
of the purpose. Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and 
the cool reader finds nothing but sweet jingles in it. When 
they grow older, they respect the argument. 


540 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


We obey the same intellectual integrity, when we study in 
exceptions the law of the world. Anomalous facts, as the 
never quite obsolete rumors of magic and demonology, and the 
new allegations of phrenologists and neurologists, are of ideal 
use. They are good indications. Homoeopathy is insignificant 
as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the 
hygeia or medical practice of the time. So with Mesmerism, 
Swedenborgism, Fourierism, and the Millennial Church; they 
are poor pretensions enough, but good criticism on the science, 
philosophy, and preaching of the day. For these abnormal 
insights of the adepts ought to be normal, and things of course. 

All things show us, that on every side we are very near to 
the best. It seems not worth while to execute with too much 
pains some one intellectual, or sesthetical, or civil feat, when 
presently the dream will scatter, and we shall burst into uni¬ 
versal power. The reason of idleness and of crime is the 
deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the 
time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes. 


Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the agents 
with which we deal are subalterns, which we can 'well afford to 
let pass, and life will be simpler when we live at the centre, 
and flout the surfaces. I wish to speak with all respect of 
persons, but s-woetimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, 
and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each 
other, that they ere like grass and trees, and it needs an effort 
to treat them as individuals. Though the uninspired man 
certainly finds persons a conveniency in household matters, the 
divine man does not respect them ; he sees them as a rack of 
clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wnnd drives over the sur¬ 
face of the water. Blit this is flat rebellion. Nature will not 
be Buddhist; she resents generalizing, and insults the philoso¬ 
pher in every moment with a million of fresh particulars. It 
is all idle talking : as much as a man is a whole, so is he also 
a part; and it were partial not to see it. What you say in 
your pompous distribution only distributes you into your class 
and section. You have not got rid of parts by denying them, 
but are the more partial. You are one thing, but nature is 
one thing and the other thing , in the same moment. She will 
not remain orbed in a thought, but rushes into persons ; and 
when each person, inflamed to a fury of personality, would 
conquer all things to his poor crotchet, she raises up against 
him another person, and by many persons incarnates again a 


NOMINALIST AND KEALIST. 


541 


sort of whole. She will have all. Nick Bottom cannot play 
all the parts, work it how he may : there will be somebody 
else, and the w r orld will be round. Everything must have its 
flower or effort at the beautiful, coarser or finer according to 
its stuff. They relieve and recommend each other, and the 
sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities. She 
punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an induction 
which is rare and casual. We like to come to a height of land 
and see the landscape, just as we value a general remark in 
conversation. But it is not the intention of nature that we 
should live by general views. We fetch fire and water, run 
about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes 
and shoes made and mended, and are the victims of these de¬ 
tails, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational 
moment. If we were not thus infatuated, if we saw the real 
from hour to hour, we should not be here to write and to read, 
but should have been burned or frozen long ago. She would 
never get anything done, if she suffered admirable Crichtons, 
and universal geniuses. She lores better a wheelwright who 
dreams all night of wheel:;, and a groom who is part of his 
horse; for she is full of wcvl:, and these are her hands. As the 
frugal farmer takecare that his cattle shall eat down the 
rowen, and swine shall eat the waste of his house, and poultry 
shall pick the crumbs, so i: ■ -nomical mother despatches a 
new genius and habit of min I into every district and condition 
of existence, plants an eye wherever a new ray of light can 
fall, and gathering up into some man every property in the 
universe, establishes thousand-fold occult mutual attractions 
among her offspring, that all this wash and waste of power may 
be imparted and exchanged. 

Great dangers undoubtedly accrue from this incarnation 
and distribution of the godhead, and hence nature has her 
maligners, as if she were Circe; and Alphonso of Castile 
fancied he could have given useful advice. But she does not 
go unprovided; she has hellebore at the bottom of the cup. 
Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of despots. The recluse 
thinks of men as having his manner, or as not having his 
manner; and as having degrees of it, more and less. But 
when he comes into a public assembly, he sees that men have 
very different manners from his own, and in their way admi¬ 
rable. In his childhood and youth, he has had many checks 
and censures, and thinks modestly enough of his own endow¬ 
ment. When afterwards he comes to unfold it in propitious 


542 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


circumstance, it seems the only talent: he is delighted with 
his success, and accounts himself already the fellow of the 
great. But he goes into a mob, into a banking-house, into a 
mechanic’s shop, into a mill, into a laboratory, into a ship, 
into a camp, and in each new place he is no better than an 
idiot : other talents take place, and rule the hour. The rota¬ 
tion which whirls every leaf and pebble to the meridian, 
reaches to every gift of man, and we all take turns at the top. 

For nature, who abhors mannerism, has set her heart on 
breaking up all styles and tricks, and it is so much easier to 
do what one has done before, than to do a new thing, that 
there is a perpetual tendency to a set mode. In every con¬ 
versation, even the highest, there is a certain trick, which may 
be soon learned by an acute person, and then that particular 
style continued indefinitely. Each man, too, is a tyrant in 
tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and 
their trick is their natural defence. Jesus would absorb the 
race ; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps human¬ 
ity by resisting this exuberance of power. Hence the immense 
benefit of party in politics, as it reveals faults of character in 
a chief, which the intellectual force of the persons, with 
ordinary opportunity, and not hurled into aphelion by hatred, 
could not have seen. Since w r e are all so stupid, what benefit 
that there should be two stupidities ! It is like that brute 
advantage so essential to astronomy, of having the diameter of 
the earth’s orbit for a base of its triangles. Democracy is 
morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the 
schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation of all 
men into a few men. If John was perfect, why are you and I 
alive ? As long as any man exists, there is some need of him ; 
let him fight for his own. A new poet has appeared ; a new 
character approached us; why should we refuse to eat bread, 
until we have found his regiment- and section in our old army- 
files 1 Why not a new man ? Here is a new enterprise of 
Brook Farm, of Skeneateles, of Northampton : why so impa¬ 
tient to baptize them Essenes, or Port-Royalists, or Shakers, 
or by any known and effete name 1 Let it be a new way of liv¬ 
ing. Why have only two or three ways of life, and not thou¬ 
sands 1 Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. 
We came this time for condiments, not for corn. We want 
the great genius only for joy; for one star more in our con¬ 
stellation, for one tree more in our grove. But he thinks we 
wish to belong to him, as he wishes to occupy us. He greatly 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


543 


mistakes us. I think I have done well, if I have acquired a 
new word from a good author ; and my business with him is 
to find my own, though it were only to melt him down into an 
epithet or an image for daily use. 

“ Into paint will I grind thee, my bride! ” 

To embroil the confusion, and make it impossible to arrive 
at any general statement, when we have insisted on the imper¬ 
fection of individuals, our affections and our experience urge 
that every individual is entitled to honor, and a very generous 
treatment is sure to be repaid. A recluse sees only two or 
three persons, and allows them all their room ; they spread 
themselves at large. The statesman looks at many, and com¬ 
pares the few habitually with others, and these look less. Yet 
are they not entitled to this generosity of reception 1 and is not 
munificence the means of insight? For though gamesters 
say, that the cards beat all the players, though they were 
never so skilful, yet in the contest we are now considering, the 
players are also the game, and share the power of the cards. If 
you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of 
your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your 
own caricature of him. For there is somewhat spheral and 
infinite in every man, especially in every genius, which, if you 
can come very near him, sports with all your limitations. 
For, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven 
floweth, and, whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was cen¬ 
suring or rather terminating my own soul. After taxing 
Goethe as a courtier, artificial, unbelieving, worldly, — I took 
up this book of Helena, and found him an Indian of the wil¬ 
derness, a piece of pure nature like an apple or an oak, large 
as morning or night, and virtuous as a brier-rose. 

But care is taken that the whole tune shall be played. If 
we were not kept among surfaces, everything would be large 
and universal: now the excluded attributes burst in on us 
with the more brightness, that they have been excluded. 
“Your turn now, my turn next,” is the rule of the game. 
The universality being hindered in its primary form, comes in 
the secondary form of all sides: the points come in succession 
to the meridian, and by the speed of rotation, a new whole 
is formed. Nature keeps herself whole, and her representa¬ 
tion complete in the experience of each mind. She suffers no 
seat to be vacant in her college. It is the secret of the world 
that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little 
from sight, and afterwards return again. Whatever does not 


544 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


concern us, is concealed from us. As soon as a person is no 
longer related to our present well-being, he is concealed, or 
dies, as we say. Really, all things and persons are related to 
us, but according to our nature, they act on us not at once, 
but in succession, and w r e are made aware of their presence 
one at a time. All persons, all things which we have known, 
are here present, and many more than we see; the world is 
full. As the ancient said, the world is a plenum or solid; and 
if we saw all things that really surround us, we should be im¬ 
prisoned and unable to move. For, though nothing is impas¬ 
sable to the soul, but all things are pervious to it, and like 
highways, yet this only whilst the soul does not see them. 
As soon as the soul sees any object, it stops before that object. 
Therefore, the divine Providence, which keeps the universe open 
in every direction to the soul, conceals all the furniture and 
all the persons that do not concern a particular soul, from the 
senses of that individual. Through solidest eternal things, 
the man finds his road, as if they did not subsist, and does 
not once suspect their being. As soon as he needs a new 
object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer attempts to 
pass through it, but takes another way. When he has ex¬ 
hausted for the time the nourishment to be drawn from any 
one person or thing, that object is withdrawn from his observa¬ 
tion, and though still in his immediate neighborhood, he does 
not suspect its presence. Nothing is dead : men feign them¬ 
selves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, 
and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and 
well, in some new and strange disguise. Jesus is not dead : 
he is very well alive : nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor 
Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and 
could easily tell the names under which they go. 

If we cannot make voluntary and conscious steps in the 
admirable science of universals, let us see the parts wisely, and 
infer the genius of nature from the best particulars with a be¬ 
coming charity. What is best in each kind is an index of 
what should be the average of that thing. Love shows me 
the opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in my friend a 
hidden wealth, and I infer an ecpial depth of good in every 
other direction. It is commonly said by farmers, that a good 
pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor 
one ; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or 
thought, or friend, but the best. 

The end and the means, the gamester and the game, — life 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


545 


is made up of the intermixture and reaction of these two 
amicable powers, whose marriage appears beforehand mom 
strous, as each denies and tends to abolish the other. We 
must reconcile the contradictions as we can, but their discord 
and their concord introduce wild absurdities into our thinking 
and speech. No sentence will hold the whole truth, and the 
only way in which we can be just, is by giving ourselves the 
lie; Speech is better than silence; silence is better than 
speech ; — All things are in contact; every atom has a sphere 
of repulsion ; — Things are, and are not, at the same time ; 
—- and the like. All the universe over, there is but one thing, 
this old Two-Face, creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, 
of which any proposition may be affirmed or denied. Very 
fitly, therefore, I assert, that every man is a partialist, that 
nature secures him as an instrument by self-conceit, prevent¬ 
ing the tendencies to religion and science; and now further 
assert, that, each mau’s genius being nearly and affectionately 
explored, he is justified in his individuality, as his nature is 
found to be immense : and now I add, that every man is a 
universalist also, and, as our earth, whilst it spins on its own 
axis, spins all the time around the sun through the celestial 
spaces, so the least of its rational children, the most dedicated 
to his private affair, works out, though as it were under a dis¬ 
guise, the universal problem. We fancy men are individuals; 
so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through 
every point of pumpkin history. The rabid democrat, as 
soon as he is senator and rich man, has ripened beyond pos¬ 
sibility of sincere radicalism, and unless he can resist the sun, 
he must be conservative the remainder of his days. Lord 
Eldon said in his old age, “ that, if he were to begin life again, 
he would be damned but he would begin as agitator.” 

We hide this universality, if we can, but it appears at all 
points. We are as ungrateful as children. There is nothing 
we cherish and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn 
and rend it. We keep a running fire of sarcasm at ignorance 
and the life of the senses ; then goes by, perchance, a fair girl, 
a piece of life, gay and happy, and making the commonest of¬ 
fices beautiful, by the energy and heart with which she does 
them, and seeing this, we admire and love her and them, and 
say, ‘ Lo ! a genuine creature of the fair earth, not dissipated, 
or too early ripened by books, philosophy, religion, society, or 
care ! 9 insinuating a treachery and contempt for all we had so 
long loved and wrought in ourselves and others. 


546 


NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 


If we could have any security against moods! If the pro- 
foundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer 
who is ready to sell all and join the crusade could have any 
certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his tes¬ 
timony ! But the Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and 
never interposes an adamantine syllable ; and the most sincere 
and revolutionary doctrine, put as if the ark of God were car¬ 
ried forward some furlongs, and planted there for the succor 
of the world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside by the 
same speaker, as morbid ; “ I thought I was right, but I was 
not, ” — and the same immeasurable credulity demanded for 
new audacities. If we were not of all opinions ! if we did not 
in any moment shift the platform on which we stand, and look 
and speak from another ! if there could be any regulation, any 
‘ one-hour-rule, ’ that a man should never leave his point of 
view, without sound of trumpet. I am always insincere, as 
always knowing there are other moods. 

How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies 
in the mind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet unsaid, 
from the incapacity of the parties to know each other, although 
they use the same words ! My companion assumes to know 
my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation 
to explanation, until all is said which words can, and we leave 
matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious as¬ 
sumption. Is it that every man believes every other to be an 
incurable partialist, and himself a universalist ? I talked yes¬ 
terday with a pair of philosophers : I endeavored to show*my 
good men that I liked everything by turns, and nothing long ; 
that I loved the centre, but doated on the superficies ; that I 
loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats ; that I revered 
saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its 
ground, and died hard ; that I was glad of men of every gift 
and nobility, but would not live in their arms. Could they 
but once understand, that I loved to know that they existed, 
and heartily wished them Godspeed, yet, out of my poverty 
of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when 
they came to see me, and could well consent to their living 
in Oregon, for any claim I felt on them, it would be a great 
satisfaction. 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 


A Lecture read before the Society in Amory Hall, on 
Sunday, March 3 , 1844 . 

—♦— 


In the suburb, in the town, 

On the railway, in the square, 
Came a beam of goodness down 
Doubling daylight everywhere: 

• Peace now each for malice takes, 
Beauty for his sinful weeds; 

For the angel Hope aye makes 
Him an angel whom she leads. 























































































































































. 

■ 







































NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


W HOE\ ER has had opportunity of acquaintance with 
society in New England, during the last twenty- 
five years, with those middle and with those leading sections 
that may constitute any just representation of the character 
and aim of the community, will have been struck with the 
great activity of thought and experimenting. His attention 
must be commanded by the signs that the Church, or religious 
party, is falling from the church nominal, and is appearing in 
temperance and non-resistance societies, in movements of ab¬ 
olitionists and of socialists, and in very significant assemblies, 
called Sabbath and Bible Conventions, — composed of ultra- 
ists, of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent, and 
meeting to call in question the authority of the Sabbath, of 
the priesthood, and of the church. In these movements, noth¬ 
ing was more remarkable than the discontent they begot in 
the movers. The spirit of protest and of detachment drove 
the members of these Conventions to bear testimony against 
the church, and immediately afterward, to declare their dis¬ 
content with these Conventions, their independence of their 
colleagues, and their impatience of the methods whereby they 
were working. They defied each other, like a congress of 
kings, each of whom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own 
that made concert unprofitable. What a fertility of projects 
for the salvation of the world ! One apostle thought all men 
should go to farming; and another, that no man should buy 
or sell; that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another, 
that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink damna¬ 
tion. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the 
death to fermentation. It was in vain urged by the house¬ 
wife, that God made yeast, as w T ell as dough, and loves fer¬ 
mentation just as dearly as lie loves vegetation ; that fermen- 



550 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


tation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes 
it more palatable and more digestible. No; they wish the 
pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment. Stop, dear 
nature, these incessant advances of thine ; let us scotch these 
ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the system of agricul¬ 
ture, the use of animal manures in farming; and the tyranny 
of man over brute nature ; these abuses polluted his food. 
The ox must be taken from the plough, and the horse from 
the cart, the hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and 
the man must walk wherever boats and locomotives will not 
carry him. Even the insect world was to be defended, — that 
had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection 
of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitoes was to be incorporated 
without delay. With these appeared the adepts of homoe¬ 
opathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their 
wonderful theories of the Christian miracles ! Others assailed 
particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the mer¬ 
chant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. 
Others attacked the institution of marriage, as the fountain of 
social evils. Others devoted themselves to the worrying of 
churches and meetings for public worship; and the fertile 
forms of antinomianism among the elder puritans seemed to 
have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of reform. 

With this din of opinion and debate, there was a keener 
scrutiny of institutions and domestic life than any we had 
known, there was sincere protesting against existing evils, and 
there were changes of employment dictated by conscience. 
No doubt, there was plentiful vaporing, and cases of back¬ 
sliding might occur. But in each of these movements emerged 
a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, 
and an assertion of the sufficiency of the private man. Thus 
it was directly in the spirit and genius of the age, what hap¬ 
pened in one instance, when a church censured and threatened 
to excommunicate one of its members, on account of the 
somewhat hostile part to the church, which his conscience led 
him to t£ke in the antislavery business; the threatened in¬ 
dividual immediately excommunicated the church in a public 
and formal process. This has been several times repeated : 
it was excellent when it was done the first time, but, of course, 
loses all value when it is copied. Every project in the history 
of reform, no matter how violent and surprising, is good, when 
it is the dictate of a man’s genius and constitution, but very 
dull and suspicious when adopted from another. It is right 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


551 


and beautiful in any man to say, £ I will take this coat, or this 
book, or this measure of corn of yours,’ — in whom we see 
the act to be original, and to flow from the whole spirit and 
faith of him; for then that taking will have a giving as free 
and divine : but we are very easily disposed to resist the same 
generosity of speech, when we miss originality and truth to 
character in it. 

There was in all the practical activities of New England, 
for the last quarter of a century, a gradual withdrawal of 
tender consciences from the social organizations. There is 
observable throughout, the contest between mechanical and 
spiritual methods, but with a steady tendency of the thought¬ 
ful and virtuous to a deeper belief and reliance on spiritual 
facts. 

In politics, for example, it is easy to see the progress of 
dissent. The country is full of rebellion; the country is full 
of kings. Hands off! let there be no control and no inter¬ 
ference in the administration of the affairs of this kingdom 
of me. Hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party 
of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that experiment, in- 
the face of what appear incontestable facts. I confess, the 
motto of the Globe newspaper is so attractive to me, that I 
can seldom find much appetite to read what is below it in its 
columns, “ The world is governed too much.” So the country 
is frequently affording solitary examples of resistance to the 
government, solitary nullifiers, who throw themselves on their 
reserved rights ; nay, who have reserved all their rights; who 
reply to the assessor, and to the clerk of court, that they do 
not know the State : and embarrass the courts of law, by non- 
juring, and the commander-in-chief of the militia, by non-re¬ 
sistance. 

The same disposition to scrutiny and dissent appeared in 
civil, festive, neighbor^, and domestic society. A restless, 
prying, conscientious criticism broke out in unexpected quar¬ 
ters. Who gave me the money with which I bought my coat 1 
Why should professional labor and that of the counting-house 
be paid so disproportionately to the labor of the porter and 
woodsawyerl This whole business of Trade gives me to 
pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; 
inasmuch as I am prone to count myself relieved of any respon¬ 
sibility to behave well and nobly to that person whom I pay 
with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should 
be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


/ 


be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate 
that he had a right to those aids and services which each 
asked of the other. Am I not too protected a person] is 
there not a wide disparity between the lot of me and the lot 
of thee, my poor brother, my poor sister] Am I not de¬ 
frauded of my best culture in the loss of those gymnastics 
which manual labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute ; 
I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions 
of society; I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to 
suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all 
this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my 
conformity. 

The same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts 
for the reform of Education. The popular education has been 
taxed with a want of truth and nature. It was complained 
that an education to things was not given. We are students 
of words : we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recita¬ 
tion-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with 
a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. 
We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our 
arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we can¬ 
not tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by 
the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid 
of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of a spider. The 
Roman rule was to teach a boy nothing that he could not 
learn standing. The old English rule was, ‘ All summer in 
the field, and all winter in the study.’ And it seems as if a 
man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he 
might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful 
to his friends and fellow-men. The lessons of science should 
be experimental also. The sight of the planet through a 
telescope is worth all the course on astronomy ; the shock of 
the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all the theories; the 
taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, 
are better than volumes of chemistry. 

One of the traits of the new spirit is the inquisition it fixed 
on our scholastic devotion to the dead languages. The ancient 
languages, w r ith great beauty of structure, contain wonderful 
remains of genius, which draw, and always will draw, certain 
likeminded men, — Greek men, and Roman men, in all coun¬ 
tries, to their study ; but by a wonderful drowsiness of usage, 
they had exacted the study of all men. Once (say two cen¬ 
turies ago), Latin and Greek had a strict relation to all the 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


553 


science and culture there was in Europe, and the Mathematics 
had a momentary importance at some era of activity in phys¬ 
ical science. These things became stereotyed as education, as 
the manner of men is. But the Good Spirit never cared for 
the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in 
Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells 
high and dry on the beach, and was now creating and feeding 
other matters at other ends of the world. But in a hundred 
high schools and colleges, this warfare against common sense 
still goes on. Four, or six, or ten years, the pupil is parsing 
Greek and Latin, and as soon as he leaves the University, as it 
is ludicrously styled, he shuts those books for the last time. 
Some thousands of young men are graduated at our colleges in 
this country every year, and the persons who, at forty years, 
still read Greek, can all be counted on your hand. I never 
met with ten. Four or five persons I have seen who read 
Plato. 

But is not this absurd, that the whole liberal talent of this 
country should be directed in its best years on studies which 
lead to nothing 1 What was the consequence 1 Some intelli¬ 
gent persons said or thought^ ‘ Is that Greek and Latin some 
spell to conjure with, and not words of reason 1 If the phy¬ 
sician, the lawyer, the divine, never use it to come at their 
ends, I need never learn it to come at mine. Conjuring is 
gone out of fashion, and I will omit this conjugating, and go 
straight to affairs.’ So they jumped the Greek and Latin, and 
read law, medicine, or sermons, without it. To the astonish¬ 
ment of all, the self-made men took even ground at once with 
the oldest of the regular graduates, and in a few months the 
most conservative circles of Boston and New York had quite 
forgotten who of their gownsmen was college-bred, and who 
was not. 

One tendency appears alike in the philosophical speculation, 
and in the rudest democratical movements, through all the 
petulance and all the puerility, the wish, namely, to cast aside 
the superfluous, and arrive at short methods, urged, as I sup¬ 
pose, by an intuition that the human spirit is equal to all 
emergencies alone, and that man is more often injured than 
helped by the means he uses. 

I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and the 
indication of growing trust in the private, self-supplied powers 
of the individual, to be the affirmative principle of the recent 
philosophy; and that it is feeling its own profound truth, and 

vol. i. 24 


554 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


is reaching forward at this very hour to the happiest conclu¬ 
sions. I readily concede that in this, as in every period of in¬ 
tellectual activity, there has been a noise of denial and protest ; 
much was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those 
who were reared in the old, before they could begin to affirm 
and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his removal 
of rubbish, — and that makes the offensiveness of the class. 
They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. 
They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of dark¬ 
ness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and 
lose their sanity and power of benefit. It is of little moment 
that one or two, or twenty errors of our social system be cor¬ 
rected, but of much that the man be in his senses. 

The criticism and attack on institutions which we have wit¬ 
nessed has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing 
whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate 
things around him: he has become tediously good in some 
particular, but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy 
and vanity are often the disgusting result. 

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than 
the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than 
to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, with¬ 
out supporting it by a total regeneration. Do not be so vain 
of your one objection. Do you think there is only one 1 
Alas ! my good friend, there is no part of society or of life 
better than any other part. All our things are right and wrong 
together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike. 
Do you complain of our Marriage 1 Our marriage is no worse 
than our education, our diet, our trade, our social customs. 
Do you complain of the laws of Property ? It is a pedantry to 
give such importance to them. Can we not play the game of 
life with these counters as well as with those ; in the institu¬ 
tion of property, as well as out of it. Let into it the new and 
renewing principle of love, and property will be universality. 
No one gives the impression of superiority to the institution, 
which he must give who wfill reform it. It makes no differ¬ 
ence what you say ; you must make me feel that you are aloof 
from it; by your natural and supernatural advantages, do 
easily see to the end of it, — do see how man can do without it. 
Now all men are on one side. No man deserves to be heard 
against property. Only Love, only an idea, is against prop¬ 
erty, as we hold it. 

I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


555 


my time in attacks. If I should go out of church wnenever 
I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes. 
But why come out ? the street is as false as the church, and 
when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I 
have not got away from the lie. When we see an eager as¬ 
sailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like 
asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue 1 Is 
virtue piecemeal 1 This is a jewel amidst the rags of a beggar. 

In another way the right will be vindicated. In the midst 
of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false churches, 
alike in one place and in another, — w T herever, namely, a just 
and heroic soul finds itself, there it will do what is next at 
hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth, 
it shall abrogate that old condition, law or school in which it 
stands, before the law of its ow T n mind. 

If partiality was one fault of the movement party, the other 
defect w r as their reliance on Association. Doubts such as 
those I have intimated drove many good persons to agitate 
the questions of social reform. But the revolt against the 
spirit of commerce, the spirit of aristocracy, and the inveterate 
abuses of cities, did not appear possible to individuals ; and to 
do battle against numbers, they armed themselves with num¬ 
bers, and against concert, they relied on new concert. 

Following, or advancing beyond the ideas of St. Simon, of 
Fourier, and of Owen, three communities have already been 
formed in Massachusetts on kindred plans, and many more in 
the country at large. They aim to give every member a share 
in the manual labor, to give an equal reward to labor and to 
talent, and to unite a liberal culture with an education to labor. 
The scheme offers, by the economies of associated labor and 
expense, to make every member rich, on the same amount of 
property, that, in separate families, would leave every member 
poor. These new associations are composed of men and women 
of superior talents and sentiments ; yet it may easily be ques¬ 
tioned, whether such a community will draw, except in its 
beginnings, the able and the good; whether those who have 
energy will not prefer their chance of superiority and power 
in the world, to the humble certainties of the association; 
whether such a retreat does not promise to become an asylum 
to those who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the 
strong; and whether the members will not necessarily be 
fractions of men, because each finds that he cannot enter it, 
without some compromise. Friendship and association are 


556 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


very fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of the human 
race, banded for some catholic object : yes, excellent; but re r 
member that no society can ever be so large as one man. He 
in his friendship, in his natural and momentary associations, 
doubles or multiplies himself; but in the hour in which he 
mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself 
below the stature' of one. 

But the men of less faith could not thus believe, and to such, 
concert appears the sole specific of strength. I have failed, 
and you have failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. 
Our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a 
phalanx, a community, might be. Many of us have differed in 
opinion, and we could find no man who could make the truth 
plain, but possibly a college or an ecclesiastical council might. 
I have not been able either to persuade my brother or to pre¬ 
vail on myself, to disuse the traffic or the potation of brandy, 
but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence might effectually 
restrain us. The candidate my party votes for is not to be 
trusted with a dollar, but he will be honest in the Senate, for 
we can bring public opinion to bear on him. Thus concert was 
the specific in all cases. But concert is neither better nor 
worse, neither more nor less potent than individual force. All 
the men in the world cannot make a statue walk and speak, 
cannot make a drop of blood, or a blade of grass, any more than 
one man can. But let there be one man, let there be truth 
in two men, in ten men, then is concert for the first time 
possible, because the force which moves the world is a new 
quality, and can never be furnished by adding whatever quan¬ 
tities of a different kind. What is the use of the concert of 
the false and the disunited ^ There can be no concert in two, 
where there is no concert in one. When the individual is not 
individual ,, but is dual ; when his thoughts look one way, 
and his actions another; when his faith is traversed by his 
habits ; when his will, enlightened by reason, is warped by his 
sense; when with one hand he rows, and with the other backs 
water, what concert can be ? 

I do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire. 
The world is awaking to the idea of union, and these ex¬ 
periments show what it is thinking of. It is and will be 
magic. Men will live and communicate, and plough, and 
reap, and govern, as by added ethereal power, when once they 
are united; as in a celebrated experiment, by expiration and 
respiration exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


557 


from the ground by the little finger only, and without sense 
of weight. But this union must be inward, and not one of 
covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of the methods 
they use. The union is only perfect, when all the uniters are 
isolated. It is the union of friends who live in different 
streets or towns. Each man, if he attempts to join himself 
to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his pro¬ 
portion ; and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more 
pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour 
and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the 
works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, 
the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke. 
Government will be adamantine without any governor. The 
union must be ideal in actual individualism. 

I pass to the indication in some particulars of that faith in 
man, which the heart is preaching to us in these days, and 
which engages the more regard, from the consideration, that 
the speculations of one generation are the history of the next 
following. 

In alluding just now to our system of education, I spoke of 
the deadness of its details. But it is open to graver criticism 
than the palsy of its members : it is a system of despair. The 
disease with which the human mind now labors is want of 
faith. Men do not believe in a power of education. We do 
not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we 
do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the 
defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who 
make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of in¬ 
curables. A man of good sense but of little faith, whose com¬ 
passion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went 
there, said to me, “ that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, 
and churches, and other public amusements go on.” I am 
afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin 
as the maxim of the tyrant, “ If you would rule the world 
quietly, you must keep it amused.” I notice too, that the 
ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of 
popular education is fear : 'This country is filling up with 
thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them 
to keep them from our throats.’ We do not believe that any 
education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, 
will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. Having 
settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to 
procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim 


558 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with 
inoffensive and comely manners. So have we cunningly hid 
the tragedy of limitation and inner death we cannot avert. Is 
it strange that society should be devoured by a secret melan¬ 
choly, which breaks through all its smiles, and all its gayety 
and games 1 

But even one step farther our infidelity has gone. It appears 
that some doubt is felt by good and wise men, whether really 
the happiness and probity of men is increased by the culture 
of the mind in tl|ose disciplines to which we give the name of 
education. Unhappily, too, the doubt comes from scholars, 
from persons who have tried these methods. In their ex¬ 
perience, the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts 
amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He 
was a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts 
to a marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. 
It was found that the intellect could be independently de¬ 
veloped, that is, in separation from the man, as any single 
organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous. A 
canine appetite for knowledge was generated, which must still 
be fed, but was never satisfied, and this knowledge not being 
directed on action, never took the character of substantial, 
humane truth, blessing those whom it entered.' It gave the 
scholar certain powers of expression, the power of speech, the 
power of poetry, of literary art, but it did not bring him to 
peace, or to beneficence. 

When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is 
not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized 
by unbelief. What remedy 1 Life must be lived on a higher 
plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are 
always invited to ascend; there, the whole aspect of things 
changes. I resist the scepticism of our education, and of 
our educated men. I do not believe that the differences of 
opinion and character in men are organic. I do not recognize, 
beside the class of the good and the wise, a permanent class of 
sceptics, or a class of conservatives, or of malignants, or of materi¬ 
alists. I do not believe in two classes. You remember the story 
of the poor woman who importuned King Philip of Macedon to 
grant her justice, which Philip refused : the woman exclaimed, 
“ I appeal ” : the king, astonished, asked to whom she appealed : 
the woman replied, “ From Philip drunk to Philip sober.” The 
text will suit me very well. I believe not in two classes of 
men, but in man in two moods, in Philip drunk and Philip 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


559 


sober. I think, according to the good-hearted word of Plato, 
“ Unwillingly the soul is deprived of truth.” Iron conserva¬ 
tive, miser, or thief, no man is, but by a supposed necessity, 
which he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of sight. The 
soul lets no man go without some visitations and holydays of 
a diviner presence. It would be easy to show, by a narrow 
scanning of any man’s biography, that we are not so wedded 
to our paltry performances of every kind, but that every man 
has at intervals the grace to scorn his performances, in com¬ 
paring them with his belief of what he should do, that he 
puts himself on the side of his enemies, listening gladly to 
what they say of him, and accusing himself of the same 
things. 

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which 
degrades all it has done 1 Genius counts all its miracles poor 
and short. Its own idea it never executed. The Iliad, the 
Hamlet, the Doric column, the Roman arch, the Gothic min¬ 
ster, the German anthem, when they are ended, the master 
casts behind him. How sinks the song in the waves of mel¬ 
ody which the universe pours over his soul! Before that gra¬ 
cious Infinite, out of which he drew these few strokes, how 
mean they look, though the praises of the world attend them. 
From the triumphs of his art, he turns with desire to this 
greater defeat. Let those admire who will. With silent joy 
he sees himself to be capable of a beauty that eclipses all 
which his hands have done, all which human hands have ever 
done. 

Well, we are all the children of genius, the children of vir¬ 
tue, — and feel their inspirations in our happier hours. Is not 
every man sometimes a radical in politics ? Men are conserva¬ 
tives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxu¬ 
rious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking 
their rest; when they are sick or aged : in the morning, or 
when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when 
they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals. 
In the circle of the rankest tories that could be collected in 
England, Old or New, let a powerful and stimulating intellect, 
a man of great heart and mind, act on them, and very quickly 
these frozen conservators will yield to the friendly influence, 
these hopeless will begin to hope, these haters will begin to 
love, these immovable statues will begin to spin and revolve. 
I cannot help recalling the fine anecdote which Warton relates 
of Bishop Berkeley, when he was preparing to leave England, 


560 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


with his plan of planting the gospel among the American sav¬ 
ages. “ Lord Bathurst told me that the members of the Scrib- 
lerus club, being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to 
rally Berkeley, who was also his guest, on his scheme at Ber¬ 
mudas. Berkeley, having listened to the many lively things 
they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed 
his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of elo¬ 
quence and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and, af¬ 
ter some pause, rose up all together with earnestness, exclaim¬ 
ing, ‘ Let us set out with him immediately.’ ” Men in all 
ways are better than they seem. They like flattery for the 
moment, but they know the truth for their own. It is a fool¬ 
ish cowardice which keeps us from trusting them, and speak¬ 
ing to them rude truth. They resent your honesty for an 
instant, they will thank you for it always. What is it we 
heartily wish of each other 'l Is it to be pleased and flattered? 
No, but to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our 
nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts and 
phantoms. We are weary of gliding ghostlike through the 
world, which is itself so slight and unreal. We crave a sense of 
reality, though it come in strokes of pain. I explain so, — by 
this manlike love of truth, — those excesses and errors into 
which souls of great vigor, but not equal insight, often fall. 
They feel the poverty at the bottom of all the seeming afflu¬ 
ence of the world. They know the speed with which they 
come straight through the thin masquerade, and conceive a 
disgust at the indigence of nature : Rousseau, Mirabeau, 
Charles Fox, Napoleon, Byron, —and I could easily add names 
nearer home, of raging riders, who drive their steeds so hard, 
in the violence of living to forget its illusion : they would 
know the worst, and tread the floors of hell. The heroes of 
ancient and modern fame, Cimon, Themistocles, Alcibiades, Al¬ 
exander, Caesar, have treated life and fortune as a game to be 
well and skilfully played, but the stake not to be so valued 
but that any time it could be held as a trifle light as air, and 
thrown up. Caesar, just before the battle of Pharsalia, dis¬ 
courses with the Egyptian priest, concerning the fountains of 
the Nile, and offers to quit the army, the empire, and Cleopa¬ 
tra, if he will show him those mysterious sources. 

The same magnanimity shows itself in our social relations, 
in the preference, namely, which each man gives to the society 
of superiors over that of his equals. All that a man has, wiil 
he give for right relations with his mates. All that he has, 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


561 


will he give for an erect demeanor in every company and on 
each occasion. He aims at such things as his neighbors prize, 
and gives his days and nights, his talents and his heart, to 
strike a good stroke, to acquit himself in all men’s sight as a 
man. The consideration of an eminent citizen, of a noted 
merchant, of a man of mark in his profession; naval and 
military honor, a general’s commission, a marshal’s baton, a 
ducal coronet, the laurel of poets, and, anyhow procured, the 
acknowledgment of eminent merit, have this lustre for each 
candidate, that they enable him to walk erect and unashamed, 
in the presence of some persons, before whom he felt himself 
inferior. Having raised himself to this rank, having established 
his equality with class after class, of those with ’whom he would 
live well, he still finds certain others, before whom he cannot 
possess himself, because they have somewhat fairer, somewhat 
grander, somewhat purer, which extorts homage of him. Is 
his ambition pure h then, will his laurels and his possessions 
seem worthless : instead of avoiding these men who make his 
fine gold dim, he will cast all behind him, and seek their soci¬ 
ety only, woo and embrace this his humiliation and mortifica¬ 
tion, until he shall know why his eye sinks, his voice is husky, 
and his brilliant talents are paralyzed in this presence. He is 
sure that the soul which gives the lie to all things will tell 
none. His constitution will not mislead him. If it cannot 
carry itself as it ought, high and unmatchable in the presence 
of any man, if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the 
sweetness and dignity of his life, do here withdraw and accom¬ 
pany him no longer,. it is time to undervalue what he has 
valued, to dispossess himself of what he has acquired, and 
with Csesar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and 
Cleopatra, and say, “All these will I relinquish, if you will 
show me the fountains of the Nile.” Dear to us are those who 
love us; the swift moments we spend with them are a com¬ 
pensation for a great deal of misery ; they enlarge our life ; — 
but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add 
another life : they build a heaven before us, whereof we had 
not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the 
recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted 
performances. 

As every man at heart wishes the best and not inferior soci¬ 
ety, wishes to be convicted of his error, and to come to himself, 
so he wishes that the same healing should not stop in his 
thought, but should penetrate his will or active power. The 
24* JJ 


562 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


selfish man suffers more from his selfishness, than he from 
whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit. What 
he most wishes is to be lifted to some higher platform, that he 
may see beyond his present fear the transalpine good, so that 
his fear, his coldness, his custom may be broken up like frag¬ 
ments of ice, melted and carried away in the great stream of 
good-will. Do you ask my aid ? I also wish to be a benefactor. 
I wish more to be a benefactor and servant, than you wish to 
be served by me, and surely the greatest good fortune that 
could befall me, is precisely to be so moved by you that I 
should say, ‘ Take me and all mine, and use me and mine freely 
to your ends! ’ for, I could not say it, otherwise than because 
a great enlargement had come to my heart and mind, which 
made me superior to my fortunes. Here we are paralyzed with 
fear ; we hold on to our little properties, house and land, office 
and money, for the bread which they have in our experience 
yielded us, although we confess, that our being does not flow 
through them. We desire to be made great, we desire to be 
touched with that fire which shall command this ice to stream, 
and make our existence a benefit. If therefore we start ob¬ 
jections to your project, 0 friend of the slave, or friend of the 
poor, or of the race, understand well, that it is because we 
wish to drive you to drive us into your measures. We wish to 
hear ourselves confuted. We are haunted with a belief that 
you have a secret, which it would highliest advantage us to 
learn, and we would force you to impart it to us, though it 
should bring us to prison, or to worse extremity. 

Nothing shall warp me from the belief, that every man is a 
lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in 
nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is 
the last profligacy and profanation. There is no scepticism, 
no atheism, but that. Could it be received into common 
belief, suicide would unpeople the planet. It has had a name 
to live in some dogmatic theology, but each man’s innocence 
and his real liking of his neighbor have kept it a dead letter. 
I remember standing at the polls one day, when the anger of 
the political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the 
independent electors, and a good man at my side looking on 
the people, remarked, “ I am satisfied that the largest part of 
these men, on either side, mean to vote right.” I suppose, 
considerate observers looking at the masses of men, in their 
blameless, and in their equivocal actions, will assent, that in 
spite of selfishness and frivolity, the general purpose in the 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


563 


great number of persons is fidelity. The reason why any 
one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your 
benevolent design, is in you : he refuses to accept you as a 
bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he 
feels that you have it not. You have not given him the 
authentic sign. 

If it were worth while to run into details this general doc¬ 
trine of the latent but ever-soliciting Spirit, it would be easy 
to adduce illustration in particulars of a man’s equality to the 
church, of his equality to the state, and of his equality to 
every other man. It is yet in all men’s memory, that, a few 
years ago, the liberal churches complained, that the Calvinis- 
tic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the 
complaint was confession : a religious church would not com¬ 
plain. A religious man like Behmen, Fox, or Swedenborg is 
not irritated by wanting the sanction of the church, but the 
church feels the accusation of his presence and belief. 

It only needs, that a just man should walk in our streets, 
to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial a contrivance is 
our legislation. The man w T hose part is taken, and who does 
not wait for society in anything, has a power which society 
cannot choose but feel. The familiar experiment, called the 
hydrostatic paradox, in which a capillary column of water 
balances the ocean, is a symbol of the relation of one man to 
the whole family of men. The wise Dandamis, on hearing 
the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes read, “judged 
them to be great men every way, excepting, that they were 
too much subjected to the reverence of the laws, which to 
second and authorize, true virtue must abate very much of its 
original vigor.” 

And as a man is equal to the church, and equal to the 
state, so he is equal to every other man. The disparities of 
power in men are superficial; and all frank and searching con¬ 
versation, in which a man lays himself open to his brother, ap¬ 
prises each of their radical unity. When two persons sit and 
converse in a thoroughly good understanding, the remark is 
sure to be made, See how we have disputed about words ! 
Let a clear, apprehensive mind, such as every man knows 
among his friends, converse with the most commanding poetic 
genius, I think, it would appear that there was no inequality 
such as men fancy between them ; that a perfect understand¬ 
ing, a like receiving, a like perceiving, abolished differences, 
and the poet would confess, that his creative imagination gave 


564 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


him no deep advantage, but only the superficial one, that he 
could express himself, and the other could not; that his ad¬ 
vantage was a knack, which might impose on indolent men, 
but could not impose on lovers of truth; for they know the 
tax of talent, or, what a price of greatness the power of ex¬ 
pression too often pays. I believe it is the conviction of the 
purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not 
much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion 
in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions has 
added to his fitness for his own w r ork. Each seems to have 
some compensation yielded to him by his infirmity, and every 
hinderance operates as a concentration of his force. 

These and the like experiences intimate, that man stands 
in strict connection with a higher fact never yet manifested. 
There is power over and behind us, and we are the channels 
of its communications. We seek to say thus and so, and over 
our head some spirit sits, which contradicts what we say. We 
would persuade our fellow to this or that; another self within 
our eyes dissuades him. That which we keep back, this re¬ 
veals. In vain we compose our faces and our words ; it holds 
uncontrollable communication with the enemy, and he answers 
civilly to us, but believes the spirit. We exclaim, ‘ There’s a 
traitor in the house! ’ but at last it appears that he is the 
true man, and I am the traitor. This open channel to the 
highest life is the first and last reality, so subtle, so quiet, yet 
so tenacious, that although I have never expressed the truth, 
and although I have never heard the expression of it from any 
other, I know that the whole truth is here for me. What if I 
cannot answer your questions 1 I am not pained that I can¬ 
not frame a reply to the question, What is the operation we 
call Providence 1 There lies the unspoken thing, present, 
omnipresent. Every time we converse, we seek to translate it 
into speech, but whether we hit, or whether we miss, we have 
the fact. Every discourse is an approximate answer : but it is 
of small consequence, that w r e do not get it into verbs and 
nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever. 

If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall make them¬ 
selves good in time, the man who shall be born, whose advent 
men and events prepare and foreshow, is one who shall enjoy 
his connection with a higher life, with the man within man ; 
shall destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his native but 
forgotten methods, shall not take counsel of flesh and blood, 
but shall rely on the Law alive and beautiful, which works 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


565 


over our heads and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of 
our success, when we obey it, and of our ruin, when we con¬ 
travene it. Men are all secret believers in it, else, the word 
“justice ” would have no meaning : they believe that the best is 
the true ; that right is done at last; or chaos would come. It 
rewards actions after their nature, and not after the design of 
the agent. ‘ Work,’ it saith to man, ‘ in every hour, paid or 
unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape 
the reward : whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting 
corn, or -writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine 
own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well 
as to the thought: no matter how often defeated, you are 
born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have 
done it.’ 

As soon as a man is wonted to look beyond surfaces, and to 
see how this high will prevails without an exception or an in¬ 
terval, he settles himself into serenity. He can already rely 
on the laws of gravity, that every stone will fall where it is 
due ; the good globe is faithful, and carries us securely through 
the celestial spaces, anxious or resigned : we need not inter¬ 
fere to help it on, and he will learn, one day, the mild lesson 
they teach, that our own orbit is all our task, and we need not 
assist the administration of the universe. Do not be so im¬ 
patient to set the town right concerning the unfounded pre¬ 
tensions and the false reputation of certain men of standing. 
They are laboring harder to set the town right concerning 
themselves, and will certainly succeed. Suppress for a few 
days your criticism on the insufficiency of this or that teacher 
or experimenter, and he will have demonstrated his insuffi¬ 
ciency to all men’s eyes. In like manner, let a man fall into 
the divine circuits, and he is enlarged. Obedience to his 
genius is the only liberating influence. We wish to escape 
from subjection, and a sense of inferiority, — and we make 
self-denying ordinances, we drink water, w T e eat grass, we re¬ 
fuse the laws, we go to jail; it is all in vain; only by obedi¬ 
ence to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way con¬ 
stitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise before a man, 
and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison. 

That which befits us, imbosomed in beauty and wonder as 
we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize 
our aspirations. The life of man is the true romance, which, 
when it is valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a 
higher joy than any fiction. All around us, what powers are 


566 


NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 


wrapped up under the coarse mattings of custom, and all won¬ 
der prevented. It is so wonderful to our neurologists that 
a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to 
them, that it is just as wonderful, that he should see with 
them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and 
the unwise : the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise 
man wonders at the usual. Shall not the heart which has 
received so much, trust the Power by which it lives 1 May it 
not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided 
it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will 
be worthy of the past 1 



END OF VOL. I. 



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